H. G. Wells | |
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Photograph by George Charles Beresford, 1920
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Born | Herbert George Wells 21 September 1866 Bromley, Kent, United Kingdom |
Died | 13 August 1946 Regent's Park, London, United Kingdom |
(aged 79)
Occupation | Novelist, teacher, historian, journalist |
Alma mater | Royal College of Science (Imperial College London) |
Genre | Science fiction (notably social science fiction), social realism |
Subject | World history, progress |
Notable works | |
Years active | 1895–1946 |
Spouse | Isabel Mary Wells (1891–1894, divorced) Amy Catherine Robbins (1895–1927, her death) |
Children |
George Phillip "G. P." Wells (1901–1985) Frank Richard Wells (1903–1982) Anna-Jane Kennard (1909–2010) Anthony West (1914–1987) |
Herbert George "H. G." Wells (21 September 1866 – 13 August 1946) was an English writer. He was prolific in many genres, including the novel, history, politics, social commentary, and textbooks and rules for war games. Wells is now best remembered for his science fiction novels and is called a "father of science fiction", along with Jules Verne and Hugo Gernsback. His most notable science fiction works include The Time Machine (1895), The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896), The Invisible Man (1897), and The War of the Worlds (1898). He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature four times.
Wells's earliest specialised training was in biology, and his thinking on ethical matters took place in a specifically and fundamentally Darwinian context. He was also from an early date an outspoken socialist, often (but not always, as at the beginning of the First World War) sympathising with pacifist views. His later works became increasingly political and didactic, and he wrote little science fiction, while he sometimes indicated on official documents that his profession was that of journalist. Novels like Kipps and The History of Mr Polly, which describe lower-middle-class life, led to the suggestion, when they were published, that he was a worthy successor to Charles Dickens, but Wells described a range of social strata and even attempted, in Tono-Bungay (1909), a diagnosis of English society as a whole. A diabetic, in 1934 Wells co-founded the charity The Diabetic Association (known today as Diabetes UK).