ABSTRACT
H. G. Wells (1866–1946) was the son of a small tradesman. After being apprenticed to a draper, he showed a thirst for knowledge and became a teacher and a graduate in science. After 1893 he became a full-time writer. His Experiment in Autobiography, 1934, is well worth reading and has just been re-published. He wrote The History of Mr. Polly, Kipps, many scientific romances which would now be called science fiction, e.g. The Invisible Man and The Time Machine, and many novels on social and political themes of which the best are Love and Mr. Lewisham, Tono-Bungay, Ann Veronica (on the suffragette movement) and The New Machiavelli. He also wrote histories of the world and books of popular science. He had enormous influence on the young intelligentsia of his day.
