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2. Herbert George Wells (1866-1946)
Life
A son of a professional cricketer and a small shopkeeper, Wells was born in
Bromley, Kent. Since he was born into a poor family, he was more concerned
with the class division and understood the sufferings of the lower class
English people. He got a scholarship in 1884 and studied biology with T. H.
Huxley at the Normal School of Science in Kensington. After graduation, he
tried various jobs as a draper’s apprentice, bookkeeper and tutor. In 1895,
he turned wholly to journalism and authorship. Wells joined the
Fabian
Society in 1903 but withdrew his membership in 1908. He said he was a
socialist but not a Marxist. He wanted to change the social injustice of
bourgeois society but he was more inclined to reformism.
Wells was a prolific writer with more than 50novels and
volumes of short stories and many non-fiction books. His novels dealt with
different themes in literary field, which can be broadly divided into 3
groups: science romance, comic or social novels and the novels of ideas. But
he was well known mainly as a science fiction writer, when this literary
genre was still underdeveloped. He inherited the English realistic
tradition, but combined it with the scientific fantasies. He was a precursor
in combining science with literature. All his books dealing with science
were filled with amazing imagination exhibited in different inventions as
extraordinary machines. His attitude towards the role of science in social
progress is mixed with enthusiasm and anxiety. On the one hand, he believed
in the social progress and benefaction to humankind brought by science. On
the other hand he seemed not to have much confidence in man’s ability to use
science in an appropriate way. If man could not use the power of science
wisely, it is inevitable for man to have a disgusting picture of future.
Besides the following scientific romance, The First Men on the Moon
(1901) is a science prophecy about men’s traveling to the moon.
Wells’ genius as a realistic novelist was better shown in
novels about social lives. These novels showed his other side of a talented
writer. Both novels focused on the life of the lower middle class. The
agonies, aspirations and difficulties encountered in the seeking of a better
life in capitalist England were vividly represented in the novels. His early
life experience provided him with writing materials. These social novels are
The Wheels of Chance (1896), Love and Mr. Lewisham (1900),
Kipps (1905), The History of Mr. Polly (1910), Ann Veronica: A
Modern Love Story (1909), Tono-Bungay (1909) and Mind at the
End of Its Tether (1945). Kipps is a story about a “little man”
from the lower middle class who tries to clime up to the upper society. Yet
in the process he meets many frustration and retreats to his original class.
Ann Veronica: A Modern Love Story tells the story of a girl who is
brave enough to rebel against the social, political, and sexual conventions;
Tono-Bungay (1909), disclosure of the ruthless rich class; and
Mind at the End of Its Tether (1945), showing author’s worry about human
future in a pessimistic mood.
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