Herbert George Wells was born in Bromley, Kent. His father was a shopkeeper and a professional cricketer until he broke his leg. In his early childhood Wells developed love for literature. His mother served from time to time as a housekeeper at the nearby estate of Uppark, and young Wells studied books in the library secretly. When his father’s business failed, Wells was apprenticed like his brothers to a draper. He spent the years between 1880 and 1883 in Windsor and Southsea, and later recorded them in Kipps (1905). In the story Arthur Kipps is raised by his aunt and uncle. Kipps is also apprenticed to a draper. After learning that he has been left a fortune, Kipps enters the upper-class society, which Wells describes with sharp social criticism.
In 1883 Wells became a teacher/pupil at Midhurst Grammar School. He obtained a scholarship to the Normal School of Science in London and studied there biology under T.H. Huxley. However, his interest faltered and in 1887 he left without a degree. He taught in private schools for four years, not taking his B.S. degree until 1890. Next year he settled in London, married his cousin Isabel and continued his career as a teacher in a correspondence college. From 1893 Wells became a full-time writer.
Wells left Isabel for one of his brightest students, Amy Catherine, whom he married in 1895. As a novelist Wells made his debut with The Time Machine, a parody of English class division. The basic principles of the machine contained materials regarding time as the fourth dimension—years later Albert Einstein published his theory of the four dimensional continuum of space-time.
The Time Machine was followed by The Island Of Dr. Moreau (1896), in which a mad scientist transforms animals into human creatures.
The Invisible Man was a Faustian story of a scientist who has tampered with nature in pursuit of superhuman powers, and The War of the Worlds, a novel of an invasion of Martians.
Cecil B. DeMille bought the rights of the novel in 1925. In 1930 Paramount offered the story to the Soviet director Sergei Eisenstein, but he never attempted an adaptation. Its later Hollywood version from 1953 reflected Cold War attitudes. The First Men On The Moon (1901) was prophetic description of the methodology of space flight, and The War In The Air (1908) foresaw the importance of air forces in combat. Although Wells’s novels were highly entertaining, he also tried to arise debate about the future of the mankind.
Dissatisfied with his literary work, Wells moved into the novel genre with Love And Mr. Lewisham (1900). Kipps strengthened his reputation as a serous writer. Wells also published critical pamphlets attacking the Victorian social order, among them Anticipations (1901), Mankind In The Making (1903), and A Modern Utopia (1905). In The History Of Mr. Polly (1909) Wells returned to vanished England.
Passionate concern for society led Wells to join in 1903 the socialist Fabian Society in London. It advocated a fairer society by planning for a gradual system of reforms. Wells did not believe in Marx’s proletarian socialism, and wrote a messianic dystopia about socialist revolution, When The Sleeper Wakes (1899).
Wells soon quarreled with the society’s leaders, among them George Bernard Shaw. This experience was basis for his novel The New Machiavelli (1911), which portrayed the noted Fabians. At the outbreak of war in 1914, Wells was involved in a love affair with a young journalist, Rebecca West, 26 years his junior. West and Wells called themselves “panther” and “jaguar”. Their son Anthony West later wrote about their difficult relationship in Aspects of a Life (1984).
After WW I Wells published several non-fiction works, among them The Outline Of History (1920), The Science Of Life (1929-39), written in collaboration with Sir Julian Huxley and George Philip Wells, and Experiment In Autobiography (1934). At this time Wells had gained the status as a popular celebrity, and he continued to write prolifically. In 1917 he was a member of Research Committee for the League of Nations and published several books about the world organization.
Although Wells had many reservations about the Soviet system, he understood the broad aims of the Russian Revolution, and had in 1920 a fairly amiable meeting with Lenin. In the early 1920s Wells was a labour candidate for Parliament. Between the years 1924 and 1933 Wells lived mainly in France. In The Holy Terror (1939) Wells studied the psychological development of a modern dictator exemplified in the careers of Stalin, Mussolini, and Hitler.
Wells lived through World War II in his house on Regent’s Park, refusing to let the blitz drive him out of London. His last book, Mind At The End Of Its Tether (1945), was about mankind’s future prospects, which he had always viewed with pessimism. Wells died in London on August 13. 1946.
