H G Wells Another Kind Of Life

An unlikely lothario, one of the most successful writers of his time, a figure at the heart of the age's political and artistic debates—H. G. Wells' life is a great story in its own right When H. G. Wells left school in 1880 at 13 he seemed destined for obscurity—yet he defied expectations, becoming one of the most famous writers in the world. He wrote classic science-fiction tales such as The Time Machine, The Invisible Man, and The War of the Worlds; reinvented the Dickensian novel in Kipps and The History of Mr Polly; pioneered postmodernism in experimental fiction; and harangued his contemporaries in polemics which included two bestselling histories of the world. He brought equal energy to his outrageously promiscuous love life—a series of affairs embraced distinguished authors such as Dorothy Richardson and Rebecca West, the gun-toting travel writer Odette Keun, and Russian spy Moura Budberg. Until his death in 1946 Wells had artistic and ideological confrontations with everyone from Henry James to George Orwell, from Churchill to Stalin. He remains a controversial figure, attacked by some as a philistine, sexist, and racist, praised by others as a great writer, a prophet of globalization, and a pioneer of human rights. Setting the record straight, this authoritative biography is the first full-scale account to include material from the long-suppressed skeleton correspondence with his mistresses and illegitimate daughter.

A fascinating journey into the life of H.G. Wells, from one of Britain's best biographers How did the first forty years of H. G. Wells' life shape the father of science fiction? From his impoverished childhood in a working-class English family, to his determination to educate himself at any cost, to the serious ill health that dominated his twenties and thirties, his complicated marriages, and love affair with socialism, the first forty years of H. G. Wells' extraordinary life would set him on a path to become one of the world's most influential writers. The sudden success of The Time Machine and The War of The Worlds transformed his life and catapulted him to international fame; he became the writer who most inspired Orwell and countless others, and predicted men walking on the moon seventy years before it happened. In this remarkable, empathetic biography, Claire Tomalin paints a fascinating portrait of a man like no other, driven by curiosity and desiring reform, a socialist and a futurist whose new and imaginative worlds continue to inspire today. 'The finest of biographers' Hilary Mantel 'A most intelligent and sympathetic biographer' Daily Telegraph 'One of the best biographers of her generation' Guardian

H. G. Wells played a central role in defining the intellectual, political, and literary character of the twentieth century. A prolific literary innovator, he coined such concepts as “time machine,” “war of the worlds,” and “atomic bomb,” exerting vast influence on popular ideas of time and futurity, progress and decline, and humanity’s place in the universe. Wells was a public intellectual with a worldwide readership. He met with world leaders, including Roosevelt, Lenin, Stalin, and Churchill, and his books were international best-sellers. Yet critics and scholars have largely forgotten his accomplishments or relegated them to genre fiction, overlooking their breadth and diversity. In Inventing Tomorrow, Sarah Cole provides a definitive account of Wells’s work and ideas. She contends that Wells casts new light on modernism and its values: on topics from warfare to science to time, his work resonates both thematically and aesthetically with some of the most ambitious modernists. At the same time, unlike many modernists, Wells believed that literature had a pressing place in public life, and his works reached a wide range of readers. While recognizing Wells’s limitations, Cole offers a new account of his distinctive style as well as his interventions into social and political thought. She illuminates how Wells embodies twentieth-century literature at its most expansive and engaged. An ambitious rethinking of Wells as both writer and thinker, Inventing Tomorrow suggests that he offers a timely model for literature’s moral responsibility to imagine a better global future.

H. G. Wells and All Things Russian is a fertile terrain for research and this volume will be the first to devote itself entirely to the theme. Wells was an astute student of Russian literature, culture and history, and the Russians, in turn, became eager students of Wells’s views and works. During the Soviet years, in fact, no significant foreign author was safer for Soviet critics to praise than H. G. Wells. The reason was obvious. He had met – and largely approved of – Lenin, was a close friend of the Soviet literary giant Maxim Gorky and, in general, expressed much respect for Russia’s evolving Communist experiment, even after it fell into Stalin’s hands. While Wells’s attitude towards the Soviet Union was, nevertheless, often ambivalent, there is definitely nothing ambiguous about the tremendous influence his works had on Russian literary and cultural life.

A riveting novel about the remarkable life—and many loves—of author H. G. Wells H. G. Wells, author of The Time Machine and War of the Worlds, was one of the twentieth century's most prophetic and creative writers, a man who immersed himself in socialist politics and free love, whose meteoric rise to fame brought him into contact with the most important literary, intellectual, and political figures of his time, but who in later years felt increasingly ignored and disillusioned in his own utopian visions. Novelist and critic David Lodge has taken the compelling true story of Wells's life and transformed it into a witty and deeply moving narrative about a fascinating yet flawed man. Wells had sexual relations with innumerable women in his lifetime, but in 1944, as he finds himself dying, he returns to the memories of a select group of wives and mistresses, including the brilliant young student Amber Reeves and the gifted writer Rebecca West. As he reviews his professional, political, and romantic successes and failures, it is through his memories of these women that he comes to understand himself. Eloquent, sexy, and tender, the novel is an artfully composed portrait of Wells's astonishing life, with vivid glimpses of its turbulent historical background, by one of England's most respected and popular writers.

This book traces the literary friendship between Joseph Conrad and H. G. Wells from their early correspondence through to the differences that caused their estrangement, including their respective responses to the First World War. It thus gives an overview of the literary scene in the late Victorian and early Edwardian period.

A Study Guide for H. G. Wells's "Country of the Blind," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Short Stories for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Short Stories for Students for all of your research needs.