"H. G. Wells" by Lovat Dickson

This is a biography of the writer of science fiction novels such as The War of the Worlds, The Time Machine, and The Invisible Man, of 'serious' novels such as Kipps, The History of Mr Polly, and Love and Mr Lewisham, of a History of the world and many, many more books. Starting life as the son of ex-servants (told of in Tono-Bungay), failing to impress as a draper's apprentice, a chemist's apprentice, and a draper's apprentice (again), then failing as a teacher because his cousin the headmaster had "forged the necessary references and documents to obtain the position", enduring grinding poverty as a student, he became a lifelong socialist. Wells sparred with George Bernard Shaw and the Webbs before leaving the Fabians; later he interviewed both Lenin and Stalin. The private life of Dickson's "lusty, whoring, meat-eating, tubby hero" was scandalous, leaving his first wife to run away with the woman who became his second, then engineering a marriage that left him free to have affairs (he wasn't the only one: children's novelist Edith Nesbit lived among many children fathered by her husband - and their mothers), including fathering novelist and historian Anthony West on his long-standing lover, author Rebecca West (who wrote The Return of the Solider). Novels reflecting his advocacy of free love proved rather difficult even for a world famous author to publish in the years before the First World War. This book makes the point that we sometimes see the First World War as the watershed, after which the old order could no longer stand, but change was occurring before then. "Antagonisms between classes, between generations, even between the sexes, were expressing themselves in strikes and lockouts, in lack of sympathy between social classes, in women's struggle for emancipation, in political uncertainties. A new order was evolving, making the young impatient to inherit their destiny, and the old grimly reluctant to yield up authority." (C 12)

He was incredibly influential. "Test him for prophetic accuracy at any point, and he is nearly always right." (C 19). One book, The World Set Free, with its prediction of atomic warfare written in 1913, so horrified Leo Szilard that when he sought to patent his idea of a nuclear chain reaction he assigned the patent to the British Admiralty in order that it might be kept secret.

Yet somehow this biography failed to enthrall me. It virtually ignored some of his most famous works, such as The Invisible Man, concentrating instead on charting the development of his ideas in some of his later works. I was sometimes confused by the chronology. There were moments when episodes in the books were linked with real life experiences, and it is clear that Wells frequently turned friends and acquaintances (and enemies) into characters, but I still wanted more about the writing and less about the life. Perhaps I am being unrealistic. Perhaps I should read a literary evaluation rather than a biography.

Some more great lines:

• "if an angel were to appear on earth, somebody would be sure to shoot it." (C 5)
• "Jealousy and possessiveness are the natural accompaniment of any love affair" (C 6)
• "the heaven Wells dreamed of in 1900 bears a distinct resemblance to the 1984 hell imagined half a century later by George Orwell." (C 7)
• "The Christian Christ is too fine for him; he had no petty weaknesses." (C 9)
• "He saw all the scandal as emanating from the Old Gang in the Fabian Society - not surprisingly, since he had succeeded in seducing the daughters of two of its most eminent members" (C 11)
• "part of the price for such a misdemeanour has to be paid by those who have not drunk the wine and eaten the cake." (C 11)
• "Self-sacrifice is a dream and self-restraint a delusion." (C 11)
• "He was not powerless against the surge of sex so much as seeking it ... as a sensual release to a mind overburdened by thought." (C 12)
• "Popular newspapers inclined the popular mind to the persuasion that just outside their humdrum lives drama impended." (C13) Panem et circenses I suppose.
• "Sex had got out of the pages of daring novels and into the bed of the common man" (C 16)
• "It was a poor time for prophets, since all of them must be Cassandras." (C 18)

October 2018; 317 pages

Other novels by H G Wells reviewed in this blog include:

• The War of the Worlds
• The Time Machine
• Tono-Bungay
• Love and Mr Lewisham
• The History of Mr Polly
• Kipps
• The First Men in the Moon

Biographies of H G Wells reviewed in this blog:

• H G Wells by Lovat Dickson
• H G: The History of Mr Wells by Michael Foot

This review was written by the author of Motherdarling  and The Kids of God