Sherborne - H.G. Wells: Another Kind of Life

When H.G. Wells left school at the age of thirteen he looked destined for obscurity. Defying expectations, he went on to become one of the most famous writers in the world, predicting the atomic bomb and creating such classic science fiction as The Time Machine, The Invisible Man and The War of the Worlds, reinventing the Dickensian novel in Kipps and The History of Mr Polly, pioneering postmodernism in experimental fictions such as Tono-Bungay and haranguing his contemporaries in a series of left-liberal polemics. He brought equal energy to his love life, with numerous affairs with well-known authors such as Dorothy Richardson and Rebecca West, daughters of friends, the gun-toting travel writer Odette Keun and even a Russian spy.

He remains a controversial figure to this day, attacked by some as a philistine, a sexist and a racist, praised by others as a great writer, a prophet of globalization and a pioneer of human rights. His life is a fascinating story, and Michael Sherborne sets the record straight in this authoritative yet entertaining biography, the first full-scale account of Wells to include suppressed correspondence with his mistresses and illegitimate daughter.

Michael Sherborne is a former Head of the English and Humanities Department at Luton Sixth Form College. He was awarded a Ph.D. for his thesis on Wellss fiction at the University of Nottingham and has since written a study of Wellss novels, Modern Novelists: H.G. Wells, under the name of Michael Draper, and edited critical editions of The Country of the Blind and Other Stories (Oxford University Press) and A Short History of the World (Penguin Classics). He has contributed book reviews to many publications, including the Literary Review and the Mail on Sunday, and is the author of York Notes study guides on Brave New World, Nineteen Eighty-Four and A Midsummer Nights Dream.

A brilliant portrait of the man and the writer sympathetic but clear-eyed packed with facts and discreetly witty. Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, Sunday Telegraph

Admirably comprehensive Sherborne doesnt shy away from the contradictions and imperfections in either Wellss character or his works a well-rounded portrait of a flawed but truly prophetic figure. Mail on Sunday

Authoritative Sherborne has an unrivalled command of the writers diverse output He writes with bemused detachment and great clarity. Claire Harman, Times Literary Supplement

Literary scholar Sherborne chronicles every facet of Wellss grand uvre and tumultuous, productive life with pleasure, skill and insight Sherborne is the first to portray the protean, scandalous, world-changing writer in full. Booklist

A valuable contribution to Wells studies Sherborne has a direct, vigorous, often witty style, and the biography is readable and interesting throughout meticulous and wide-ranging in its research and persuasive in its arguments. Sylvia Hardy, The Wellsian

For Marianne,
with love and gratitude

M y debt to previous biographers of Wells is evident throughout. I have particularly drawn on the work of Geoffrey West, Vincent Brome, Lovat Dickson, Norman and Jeanne MacKenzie and my old friend David Smith who, sadly, died while this book was going to press. Editions of Wellss correspondence by David and others proved to be equally valuable.

Drafts of this book have been read by intellects vast, cool and [not entirely] unsympathetic namely, Robert Crossley, John Hammond, Patrick Parrinder and John Partington. Their advice and otherworldly facility in spotting errors has been invaluable. I am also grateful for the positive feedback received from Sylvia Hardy and from Chris and Liz Rolfe.

A Velde Research Fellowship from the University of Illinois enabled me to spend a month in the summer of 2006 carrying out research in the Wells Archive, held in the Rare Book and Manuscript Library of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Thanks are due to Dennis Sears, Valerie Hotchkiss and everyone else who helped out during my stay, not forgetting the Catholic anarchist ladies who took me out for a Thai lunch. Above all, my thanks are due to Gene and Margaret Rinkel, who not only helped me in my research, but also housed, fed and entertained me for the duration with a hospitality I shall always fondly remember.

Much of the basic research for the book was carried out on weekend visits to the British Library, whose staff courteously supplied me with many often obscure books. I also received helpful advice when consulting the Wells Collection at Bromley Central Library and sessions papers in the East Kent Archives Centre.

For permission to quote or reproduce written material I acknowledge and thank the relevant copyright holders, most of all United Agents on behalf of the literary executors of the estate of H.G. Wells for permission to quote extensively from his published and unpublished writings and from the letters of Amy Catherine Wells. Quotations from the letters of Amber Blanco White ne Pember Reeves appear courtesy of Dr Dusa McDuff, and those of Annajane Davis ne Blanco White appear courtesy of AJ herself and her son Michael, who also supplied helpful information on the Wells family tree. Helen Alexander and Tim Suter kindly gave permission to use the quotations from Moura Budberg. The extract from the letter by Christabel McLaren is reproduced with the gracious permission of Mr Christopher McLaren. The extract by Rebecca West from Henry James ( Rebecca West, 1916) is reproduced by permission of Peters, Fraser and Dunlop on behalf of the estate of Dame Rebecca West. The extracts from Rebecca Wests letters, taken from Victoria Glendinnings Rebecca West: A Life, published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson, are included by kind permission of David Higham Associates. The extracts from articles by George Orwell ( George Orwell 1941 and 1946) are reprinted by permission of Bill Hamilton, as the literary executor of the estate of the late Sonia Brownell Orwell, and Secker and Warburg. The quotations from T.S. Eliot appear courtesy of the Estate of T.S. Eliot and Faber and Faber. The extract from the diary of Edie Rutherford, preserved in the Mass Observation Archive at the University of Sussex, is reproduced by permission of Curtis Brown Group on behalf of the Trustees of the Mass Observation Archive ( the Trustees of the Mass Observation Archive, 2004). Quotations from the diary of Beatrice Webb are reproduced with the kind permission of the London School of Economics and Political Science. Quotations from the writings of Virginia Woolf are reprinted with the permission of the Society of Authors as the literary representative of her estate.

The front cover photograph and the 1934 portrait of Wells are reproduced with permission of the National Portrait Gallery, London. The image of the Fabian stained glass window on the rear cover was supplied by the London School of Economics and Political Science and is reproduced with the permission of the Beatrice Webb Memorial Trust. The picture of Wells on the set of Things to Come appears by permission of ITV Global Entertainment. Getty Images supplied the photographs of Rebecca West, Wells with Lenin and Wells in his study at Hanover Terrace. The photograph of Wells aged ten was supplied by Bromley Public Library, the picture of Wells with Elizabeth von Arnim by the Huntington Library, San Marino, California, and the picture of Martha Gellhorn by the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library, New York. All the remaining illustrations are reproduced courtesy of the University of Illinois.