The War of the Worlds

Biographie de Herbert George Wells

H.G. Wells the third son of a smalll shopkeeper, was born in Bromley in 1866. After two years' apprenticeship in a draper's shop, he became a pupil-teacher at Midhurst Grammar School and won a scholarship to study under T.H. Huxley et the Normal School of Science, South Kensington. He taught biology before becoming a professional writer and journalist. He wrote more than a hundred books, including novels, essays, histories and programmes for world regeneration. Wells, who rose from obscurity to world fame, had an emotionally and intellectually turbulent life. His prophetic imagination was first displayed in pioneering works of science fiction such as The Time Machine ( 1895 ), The Island of Doctor Moreau ( 1896 ), The Invisble Man ( 1897 ) and The War of Worlds ( 1898 ). Later he became an apostle of socialism, science and progress, whose anticipations of a future world state include The Shape of Things to Come ( 1933). His controversial views on sexual equality and women'srights were expressed in the novels Ann Veronica ( 1909 )and The New Machiavelli ( 1911 ). He was, in Bertrand Russel's words, 'an imporatnt liberator of thought and action'. Wells drew on his own early struggles in many of his best Tono-Bungay ( 1909) and the History of Mr Polly ( 1910). His Experiment in Autobiography ( 2 vols, 1934 ) reviews his world. He died in London i, 1946.