Critical Insights H.G. Wells

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From his “scientific romances” of the 1890s to his death in 1946, British author H. G. Wells was many things: a pioneering science fiction author; a bestselling and sometimes controversial author of realistic fiction; and a popular nonfiction writer on history, science, society, and politics.

Edited by Darren Harris-Fain of Auburn University at Montgomery, this volume contains essays that look critically at one of the earliest science fiction writers. The author of dozens of fiction titles, including The Time Machine, The Island of Doctor Moreau, The Invisible Man, and War of the Worlds, H.G. Wells has left an important mark. Although he is best remembered for his fiction works, particularly his scientific romances, Wells also had a successful career as a nonfiction writer.

The central goals of this volume are to inform readers of Wells’s early life and influences as well as outline the qualities that make this author’s legacy so influential within the literary world, focusing specifically on his fiction works.

Within these thirteen essays, introduction, biographical sketch, chronology, author’s bibliography, and academic bibliography, the reader will find a great many discussions and fresh interpretations: from the societal and scientific influences that inspired Wells’s works to the praise and criticism it garnered, even decades after publication.

In the Introductory Essay, Darren Harris-Fain discusses the organization of the book, covering the popular and lesser-known works explored in this volume. Harris-Fain also provides an overview of the contextual information as well as the in-depth explorations of Wells’s work contained in this volume.

Next, The History of H. G. Wells: An Outline provides insights into Wells’s voluminous career as a popular and acclaimed author and public figure. A brief Biography follows, chronicling Wells’s personal and professional life up until his death in 1946.

Next comes the Critical Contexts section of this book, which contains the following essays:

• The Evolution of H. G. Wells: A Scientific and Storytelling Mind in Late-Victorian England
• The Genius and the Blasphemer: Critical Reception of H. G. Wells’s Early Scientific Romances
• Twenty-First Century Criticism of H. G. Wells’s War of the Worlds
• Love, War, and Literature: H. G. Wells’s Britling Sees It Through and Rebecca West’s The Return of the Soldier

Following these four Critical Context essays is the Critical Readings section of this book, which contains the following essays:

• Discovery, Evolution, Animals, and Humanity in H. G. Wells’s Fiction
• Borrowed Shadows: H. G. Wells’s The Invisible Man
• “This World of Men”: A Valedictory to Youth in H. G. Wells’s “Mr. Skelmersdale in Fairyland”
• The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth: H. G. Wells’s Tragicomic Ode to “Bigness”
• H. G. Wells and Modernism
• Flow, Jigsaws, and Conspiracy: The World of William Clissold
• Rereading The Shape of Things to Come in an Age of Strongmen
• Adapt or Perish: Cautionary Lessons in Film Adaptations of The Invisible Man and The Island of Dr. Moreau
• Early Reviews of the 1953 Film of H. G. Wells’s War of the Worlds

In the final section, Resources, easy-to-follow lists are given in order to help guide the reader through important dates and moments in the author’s life. A selection of further reading is then provided. Each essay in Critical Insights: H.G. Wells includes a list of Works Cited and detailed endnotes. Also included in this volume is a Bibliography, biographies of the Editor and Contributors, as well as an alphabetical Index.

The Critical Insights Series distills the best of both classic and current literary criticism of the world’s most studies literature. Edited and written by some of academia’s most distinguished literary scholars, Critical Insights: H.G. Wells provides authoritative, in-depth scholarship that students and researchers will rely on for years. This volume is destined to become a valuable purchase for all.

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