H. G. Wells
()
About this ebook
J. D. Beresford
John Davys Beresford (1873-1947) was an English journalist and author noted for his science-fiction and horror stories, particularly his ghost stories. His most notable novels are The Hampdenshire Wonder, What Dreams May Come... and The Riddle of the Tower.
Read more from J. D. Beresford
Goslings Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Wonder Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Goslings Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Signs & Wonders Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Wonder Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Prisoners of Hartling Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Hampdenshire Wonder Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5The Wonder Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Skeptical Poltergeist: Paranormal Parlor, A Weiser Books Collection Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGoslings Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSigns & Wonders Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Jervaise Comedy Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related to H. G. Wells
Related ebooks
H. G. Wells Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMasters of Prose - H. G. Wells Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings7 best short stories by H. G. Wells Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsH. G. Wells Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCollected Novels, Short Stories, Essays and Articles Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTHE ESSENTIAL H. G. WELLS: Novels, Short Stories, Essays & Articles in One Edition Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Research Magnificent Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSamuel Johnson Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThomas Henry Huxley: A Character Sketch Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFamiliar Studies of Men and Books Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsElsie Venner Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Underground Man Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Country of the Blind: and Other Stories Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Complete Works, Novels, Plays, Stories, Ideas, and Writings of Leslie Stephen Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLove and Mr Lewisham Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Journal of a Disappointed Man Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mr Blettsworthy on Rampole Island Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Samuel Johnson Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Mortal Antipathy Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Old English Dramatists (Barnes & Noble Digital Library) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Poet at the Breakfast Table: “A moment's insight is sometimes worth a life's experience.” Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Guardian Angel Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAmong My Books. First Series Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsVilla Rubein: "Love has no age, no limit; and no death." Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Archibald Malmaison Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAxel's Castle: A Study of the Imaginative Literature of 1870-1930 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Scenes and Characters, or, Eighteen Months at Beechcroft Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHume Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Classics For You
The Master & Margarita Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mythos Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Confederacy of Dunces Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Things They Carried Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Fellowship Of The Ring: Being the First Part of The Lord of the Rings Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Old Man and the Sea: The Hemingway Library Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Flowers for Algernon Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Silmarillion Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sense and Sensibility (Centaur Classics) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Odyssey: (The Stephen Mitchell Translation) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Wuthering Heights (with an Introduction by Mary Augusta Ward) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Poisonwood Bible: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Learn French! Apprends l'Anglais! THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY: In French and English Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Jungle: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Farewell to Arms Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Iliad: The Fitzgerald Translation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Rebecca Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Republic by Plato Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Master and Margarita Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Canterbury Tales Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Animal Farm: A Fairy Story Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Count of Monte-Cristo English and French Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5For Whom the Bell Tolls: The Hemingway Library Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Count of Monte Cristo (abridged) (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5We Have Always Lived in the Castle Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Little Women (Seasons Edition -- Winter) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Grapes of Wrath Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Edgar Allan Poe Complete Collection - 120+ Tales, Poems Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Persuasion Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related categories
Reviews for H. G. Wells
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
H. G. Wells - J. D. Beresford
J. D. Beresford
H. G. Wells
EAN 8596547361626
DigiCat, 2022
Contact: DigiCat@okpublishing.info
Table of Contents
I
INTRODUCTION
THE NORMALITY OF MR WELLS
II
THE ROMANCES
III
THE NOVELS
IV
SOCIOLOGY
A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF H.G. WELLS'
PRINCIPAL WRITINGS
INDEX
I
INTRODUCTION
Table of Contents
THE NORMALITY OF MR WELLS
Table of Contents
In his Preface to the Unpleasant Plays, Mr Shaw boasts his possession of normal sight.
The adjective is the oculist's, and the application of it is Mr Shaw's, but while the phrase is misleading until it is explained to suit a particular purpose, it has a pleasing adaptability, and I can find none better as a key to the works of Mr H.G. Wells.
We need not bungle over the word normal,
in any attempt to meet the academic objection that it implies conformity to type. In this connection, the gifted possessor of normal sight is differentiated from his million neighbours by the fact that he wears no glasses; and if a few happy people still exist here and there who have no need for the mere physical assistance, the number of those whose mental outlook is undistorted by tradition, prejudice or some form of bias is so small that we regard them as inspired or criminal according to the inclination of our own beloved predilection. And no spectacles will correct the mental astigmatism of the multitude, a fact that is often a cause of considerable annoyance to the possessors of normal sight. That defect of vision, whether congenital or induced by the confinements of early training, persists and increases throughout life, like other forms of myopia. The man who sees a ball as slightly flattened, like a tangerine orange too tightly packed (an oblate spheroid
would be the physicist's brief description), seeks the society of other men who share his illusion; and the company of them take arms against the opposing faction, which is confirmed in the belief that the ball is egg-shaped, that the bulge, in fact, is not oblate
but prolate.
I will not elaborate the parable; it is sufficient to indicate that in my reading of Mr Wells, I have seen him as regarding all life from a reasonable distance. By good fortune he avoided the influences of his early training, which was too ineffectual to leave any permanent mark upon him. His readers may infer, from certain descriptions in Kipps, and The History of Mr Polly, that Wells himself sincerely regrets the inadequacies of that private school of dingy aspect and still dingier pretensions, where there were no object lessons, and the studies of book-keeping and French were pursued (but never effectually overtaken) under the guidance of an elderly gentleman, who wore a nondescript gown and took snuff, wrote copperplate, explained nothing, and used a cane with remarkable dexterity and gusto.
But, properly considered, that inadequate elderly gentleman may be regarded as our benefactor. If he had been more apt in his methods, he might have influenced the blessed normality of his pupil, and bound upon him the spectacles of his own order. Worse still, Mr Wells might have been born into the leisured classes, and sent to Eton and Christchurch, and if his genius had found any expression after that awful experience, he would probably, at the best, have written polite essays or a history of Napoleon, during the intervals of his leisured activity as a member of the Upper House.
Happily, Fate provided a scheme for preserving his eyesight, and pitched him into the care of Mr and Mrs Joseph Wells on the 21st September 1866; behind or above a small general shop in Bromley. Mrs Wells was the daughter of an innkeeper at Midhurst and had been in service as a lady's maid before her marriage. Joseph Wells had had a more distinguished career. He had been a great Kent bowler in the early sixties, and it must have been, I think, only the year before the subject of our essay appeared at Bromley that his father took four wickets with consecutive balls and created a new record in the annals of cricket. The late Sir Francis Galton might have made something out of this ancestry; I must confess that it is entirely beyond my powers, although I make the reservation that we know little of the abilities of H.G. Wells' mother. She has not figured as a recognisable portrait in any of his novels.
The Bromley shop, like most of its kind, was a failure. Moderate success might have meant a Grammar School for young Wells, and the temptations of property, but Fate gave our young radical another twist by thrusting him temporarily within sight of an alien and magnificent prosperity, where as the son of the housekeeper at Up Park, near Petersfield, he might recognise his immense separation from the members of the ruling class, as described in Tono-Bungay.
After that came the drapery,
first at Windsor and then at Southsea; but we have no autobiography of this period, only the details of the trade and its circumstances. For neither Hoopdriver, nor Kipps, nor