Listings for Author:
H. G. Wells
Click here to select all entries:
H. G. Wells : God the Invisible King
'The sculptress Kathleen Bruce, widow of the Arctic explorer Captain Scott ... became positively scornful when she read [H. G.] Wells's "God the Invisible King" in 1917 ...'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Kathleen Bruce Print: Book
H. G. Wells : Ann Veronica
'Bennett had read "Ann Veronica", which Wells had sent him that October with an inscription "The Young Mistress's Tale, to Arnold B. with love from his nephew H.G.": he hadn't been over-impressed with it, surprisingly, perhaps.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
H. G. Wells : New Machiavelli, The
'In January he had read Wells's 'The New Machieavelli' . . .[sic]'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
H. G. Wells : New Worlds for Old
"... [Margaret Cole's] reading at Girton in the early twentieth century influenced her development as a Socialist ... she was shocked by a comment in J. A. Hobson's The Science of Wealth to the effect that a certain number of wageless unemployed was a necessary condition of capitalist industry ... 'In this mood of altruistic indignation I picked up H. G. Wells's New Worlds for Old -- under the misapprehension that it was another scientific romance like The First Men in the Moon, which had fascinated me years before -- and tumbled straight into Socialism overnight'."
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Cole Print: Book
H. G. Wells : The First Men in the Moon
"... [Margaret Cole's] reading at Girton in the early twentieth century influenced her development as a Socialist ... she was shocked by a comment in J. A. Hobson's The Science of Wealth to the effect that a certain number of wageless unemployed was a necessary condition of capitalist industry ... 'In this mood of altruistic indignation I picked up H. G. Wells's New Worlds for Old -- under the misapprehension that it was another scientific romance like The First Men in the Moon, which had fascinated me years before -- and tumbled straight into Socialism overnight'."
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Cole Print: Book
H. G. Wells : Marriage
'In a letter to Mrs Herzog he says: "Wells's new novel, Marriage, of which I have just read the proofs, contains more intimate conveyances of the atmosphere of married life than anybody has ever achieved before, I am rather annoyed as I am about to try and get the same intimacy in my Clayhanger-Hilda book, entitled These Twain.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Manuscript: Unknown, proofs of book
H. G. Wells : The Time Machine
Henry James to H. G. Wells, 29 January 1900: 'It was very graceful of you to send me your book -- I mean the particular masterpiece entitled "The Time Machine", after I had so ungracefully sought it at your hands [...] You are very magnificent [...] I re-write you, much, as I read -- which is the highest tribute my damned impertinence can pay an author.'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
H. G. Wells : Mankind in the Making
Henry James to H. G. Wells, 24 January 1904: 'I've [italics] wanted [end italics], day after day, to write -- wanted to quite intensely from the day I read your two munificently-conferred books [...] "M[ankind] in the M[aking]" thrills and transports me [...] it becomes, as one reads, inordinately obective, heroic, sympathetic, D'Artagnanesque. Of the little Tales in t'other book ["Twelve Stories and a Dream"] I read one every night regularly, after going to bed -- they had only the defect of hurrying me prematurely to my couch.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
H. G. Wells : Twelve Stories and a Dream
Henry James to H. G. Wells, 24 January 1904: 'I've [italics] wanted [end italics], day after day, to write -- wanted to quite intensely from the day I read your two munificently-conferred books [...] "M[ankind] in the M[aking]" thrills and transports me [...] it becomes, as one reads, inordinately obective, heroic, sympathetic, D'Artagnanesque. 'Of the little Tales in t'other book ["Twelve Stories and a Dream"] I read one every night regularly, after going to bed -- they had only the defect of hurrying me prematurely to my couch.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
H. G. Wells : A Modern Utopia
Henry James to H. G. Wells, 19 November 1905, in praise of two works recently sent by Wells: 'I found your first munificence here on returning [from tour of USA] [...] toward the end of July [...] I recognized [...] that the Utopia ["A Modern Utopia" was a book I should desire to read only in the right conditions of [italics] coming [end italics] to it [...] I "came to it" only a short time since [...] and achieved a complete saturation; after which [...] I found Kipps [...] awaiting me -- and from his so different but still so utterly coercive embrace I have just emerged.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
H. G. Wells : Kipps
Henry James to H. G. Wells, 19 November 1905, in praise of two works recently sent by Wells: 'I found your first munificence here on returning [from tour of USA] [...] toward the end of July [...] I recognized [...] that the Utopia ["A Modern Utopia" was a book I should desire to read only in the right conditions of [italics] coming [end italics] to it [...] I "came to it" only a short time since [...] and achieved a complete saturation; after which [...] I found Kipps [...] awaiting me -- and from his so different but still so utterly coercive embrace I have just emerged.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
H. G. Wells : The Future in America
Henry James to H. G. Wells, 8 November 1906: 'I came back last night from five days in London to find your so generously-given "America," and I have done nothing today but thrill and squirm with it and vibrate to it almost feverishly and weep over it almost profusely'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
H. G. Wells : Marriage
Henry James to Edmund Gosse, 10 October 1912: 'I have received within a day or two dear old George Meredith's "Letters"; and, though I haven't been able yet very much to go into them, I catch their emanation of something so admirable, and, on the whole, so baffled and so tragic. We must have some more talk of them -- and also of Wells's book ["Marriage"], with which I am however having much difficulty. I am not so much struck with its hardness as with its weakness and looseness, the utter going by the board of any real self respect of composition and expression.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
H. G. Wells : Marriage
Henry James to H. G. Wells, 18 October 1912, whilst suffering from shingles: 'you may not have forgotten that you kindly sent me "Marriage" [...] which I've been able to give myself to at my less ravaged and afflicted hours. I have read you, as I always read you [...] with a complete abdication of all those "principles of criticism" [...] which I roam, which I totter, through the pages of others attended in some dim degree by the fond yet feeble theory of, but which I shake off, as I advance under your spell, with the most cynical inconsistency.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
H. G. Wells : The Passionate Friends
Henry James to H. G. Wells, 21 September 1913, thanking him for a copy of his new novel, "The Passionate Friends": 'I am too impatient to let you know [italics]how[end italics] wonderful I find this last [...] I bare my head before [...] the high immensity [...] which has made me absorb the so full-bodied thing in deep and prolonged gustatory draughts.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
H. G. Wells : Sir Isaac Harman's Wife
Henry James to Hugh Walpole, 21 November 1914: '[H. G.] Wells has published a mere flat tiresomeness ("Sir Isaac Harman's Wife"); at least I had, for the first time with anything of Wells's, simply to let it slide.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
H. G. Wells : critique of George Bernard Shaw, Common Sense about the War
Henry James to James B. Pinker, 6 January 1915: 'be thanked [...] for your conveyance to me of Arnold Bennett's healthy article (which I had seen and much relished, though I do myself deprecate everywhere the laying on of any rose-colour too thick), and of Wells's admirable scarification, as I hold it, of G[eorge].B[ernard].S[haw]. -- in which I find myself ready to back himn up to the hilt.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Serial / periodical
H. G. Wells : Boon, The Mind of the Race, The Wild Asses of the Devil, and The Last Trump
Henry James to H. G. Wells, 6 July 1915: 'I was given yesterday at a club your volume "Boon, etc.", from a loose leaf in which I learn that you kindly sent it me [...] I have just been reading, to acknowledge it intelligently, a considerable number of its pages -- though not all; for, to be perfectly frank, I have been in that respect beaten for the first time -- or rather for the first time but one -- by a book of yours'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
H. G. Wells : Anticipations
'I perceive you couldn?t keep your new house out of the "Fortnightly"! This third article is the best yet. I have never seen so good an illustration of the scientific use of imagination.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Serial / periodical
H. G. Wells : unknown
'I note lately the evidence of an extraordinary activity on your part. Perhaps you have observed how difficult it is to pick up a decent magazine without You in it. I took in the "Fortnightly" and the "Strand" in order to run even with you. And now damned if you haven?t let me in for "Pearson?s"! And I hear rumour of a "Dream of Armageddon" in something else. You make your readers work.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Serial / periodical
H. G. Wells : unknown
'I note lately the evidence of an extraordinary activity on your part. Perhaps you have observed how difficult it is to pick up a decent magazine without You in it. I took in the "Fortnightly" and the "Strand" in order to run even with you. And now damned if you haven?t let me in for "Pearson?s"! And I hear rumour of a "Dream of Armageddon" in something else. You make your readers work.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Serial / periodical
H. G. Wells : The First Men on the Moon
'I have read [The First Men on the Moon] in Strand, & hasten to insult & annoy you by stating that the last two instalments are among the very best things you have done. I have read Anticipations in Fortnightly, & hasten to say that I have been absolutely overwhelmed by the breadth & the sheer intellectual vigour of them, not to mention the imaginative power. These articles really have made me a little afraid of you.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Serial / periodical
H. G. Wells : Mankind in the Making
"Many thanks for 'Mankind in the Making'. Like 'Anticipations' it is very wonderful, and very uneven."
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
H. G. Wells : The Food of the Gods
'Just before leaving Paris I read the first instalment of "F. of G." in Pearson?s & thought it extremely good, barring a few minime verbal infelicities. It cost me 2 francs to buy the number, but I couldn?t resist it.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Serial / periodical
H. G. Wells : The Country of the Blind
'And that reminds me that your last Strand story was really admirable. A little faint towards the end I thought, but fundamentally damn good. '
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Serial / periodical
H. G. Wells : Scepticism of the Instrument
'I am disposed to agree with your own estimate of "Scepticism of the Instrument". I don?t, however, think that your third indictment of the instrument is quite new.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett
H. G. Wells : Scepticism of the Instrument
"I am disposed to agree with your own estimate of 'Scepticism of the Instrument'. I don?t, however, think that your third indictment of the instrument is quite new."
UnknownCentury: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett
H. G. Wells : A Modern Utopia
'Many thanks for the book. [A Modern Utopia.] If it was a novel I could say something useful about it, but as it isn?t, I don?t know that I can. The latter half of it is much more convincing & suggestive than the first half, & is also better done, but all of it is better than "Mankind in the Making".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
H. G. Wells : Kipps
'The only real seizable fault that I can find in Kipps is the engagement to Helen, which entirely failed to convince me. . . . After agreeing with myself that I read the thing all through with eagerness & joy, and after telling myself that I must not expect in your "human interest" novels those aspects of life which you either can?t see or disdain to see, I find myself asking what this book "proves" & not getting any answer.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
H. G. Wells : 'The Schoolmaster and the Empire
'. . . By the way your Westminster Gazette article was magnificent, & filled me with holy joy.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Serial / periodical
H. G. Wells :
'. . . now I see the announcement of your articles in the Tribune . . . '
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Advertisement, Serial / periodical
H. G. Wells : unknown
'Your Chicago article was very good.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Serial / periodical
H. G. Wells : In the Days of the Comet
'And you never will persuade the people who don?t matter that the close of the 'Comet' is not profoundly immoral.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Unknown
H. G. Wells : First and Last Things
'I am reading "1st & Last" which arrived a few days ago. As it isn?t a novel I can?t pontificate on it. However, when I have digested it I shall give you my ideas. There is not doubt whatever that it is a great deal too short, a very great deal.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
H. G. Wells : The New Machiavelli
'The New M is a magnificent work.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
H. G. Wells : Marriage
'I return the proofs by registered bookpost. I have read them with care. I have of course confined my observations to misprints, punctuation, points of phraseology, & sentences of which I absolutely failed to grasp the meaning.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Manuscript: Codex
H. G. Wells : The Passionate Friends
'You have been looking for the wrong things in "The Passionate Friends", & failing to see the right things.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
H. G. Wells : The Science of Life
Tuesday 2 February 1932: 'I am reading Wells' science of life, & have reached the hen that became a cock or vice versa.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
H. G. Wells : The Work, Wealth, and Happiness of Mankind
Thursday 11 February 1932: 'My mind is set running upon A Knock on the Door (whats its name?) owing largely to reading "Wells on Woman" -- how she must be ancillary & decorative in the world of the future, because she has been tried, in 10 years, & has not proved anything.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
H. G. Wells : unknown
Sunday 8 May 1932: 'I've scarcely read [on holiday in Greece] [...] only Roger's Eastman, & Wells, & Murry.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
H. G. Wells : Experiment in Autobiography
Tuesday 2 October 1934: 'Books read or in reading [over summer 1934]: Sh[akespea]re. Troilus. Pericles. Taming of Shrew. Cymbeline. Maupassant. de Vigny. only scraps [the four French authors grouped by bracket in MS] St Simon. Gide. Library books: Powys Wells Lady Brooke. Prose. Dobree. Alice James.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
H. G. Wells : Experiment in Autobiography
Wednesday 21 November 1934: 'I am reading, with interest & distaste, Wells'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
H. G. Wells : Experiment in Autobiography
Sunday 6 January 1935: 'We lunched with Maynard & Lydia [Keynes] [...] talked about [...] Wells -- [Maynard] had read his Au[tobiograph]y. Thought him a little squit [...] A lack of decency, said M. [...] Then he read us a long magnificently spry and juicy letter from Shaw, on a sickbed, aged 77. The whole of economics twiddled round on his finger, with the usual dives & gibes & colloquialities. The most artificial of all styles, I said, like his seeming natural speaking.'
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: John Maynard Keynes Print: Book
H. G. Wells : Bealby
'I do not think that "Victory" is anything like equal to "Chance". In fact it is not first-rate Conrad, "Chance" is. "Bealby" I have never read. Wells sends me all his books; but he didn’t send "Bealby" along, and I lost the list and didn’t get it.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
H. G. Wells : The Soul of a Bishop
'This is a very good number. The Wells review seems most just, but I haven’t yet finished the book. [The Soul of a Bishop]'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
H. G. Wells : The New Machiavelli
E. M. Forster to Malcolm Darling, 29 July 1911: 'I have been reading Kipling's child's history of England with mingled joy and disgust. It's a fine conception, but oh is it necessary to build character on a psychological untruth? In other words to teach the young citizen that he is absolutely unlike the young German or the young Bashahari -- that foreigners are envious and treacherous, Englishmen, through some freak of God, never --? Kipling and all that school know it's an untruth at the bottom of their hearts -- as untrue as it is unloveable. But, for the sake of patriotism, they lie. It is despairing [...] 'I couldn't on the other hand read the New Machiavelli, finding it too fretful and bumptious, and very inartistic, but must try again -- the more so as Wells, in an article in Le Temps has mentioned me among the authors qui meritent etre mieux connus en France [...] The best novels I have come across in the past year are Rosalind Murray's The Leading Note [...] and Wedgwood's Shadow of a Titan -- unfortunately written in an affected and unreadable style.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
H. G. Wells : The Outline of History
'The more I read of H.G.’s 'Outline' the more staggered I am by it.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Serial / periodical
H. G.(Herbert George) Wells : New Words for Old: A Plain Account of Modern Socialism
'Thanks ever so much for the book. One would want a long and warm talk about it.To set down the several trains of thought suggested by your pages would take many pieces of papers like this. I must resist the temptation.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
H. G. Wells : Men Like Gods
.. . . I have no prejudice against the young, rather the reverse, and yet I am looking in vain for a really good novel by that generation, and 'Men Like Gods', with all its limitations, seems to me to contain more fundamental ‘stuff’ than anything else I have read for a long time. I am very disappointed with Lawrence, who appears to me to have genius concealed somewhere within him. Joyce has enormous power and originality, but he lacks the balance which is essential to great work. George Moore can write the heads off any of you, and he is nearly 70. I will tell you the men you need for your paper- Lynd, Forster, MacCarthy, Tomlinson. Get them.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
H. G. Wells : Christina Alberta's Father
I noticed strangely few misprints in 'C.A.’s Pa'. though I had my malicious eye open for them.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
H. G. Wells : Mr. Blettsworthy on Rampole Island
'Thoroughgood’s notice of Wells’s book was deplorable. ['Mr Blettsworthy on Rampole Island']. For one thing the book is magnificently written. To me it is the best novel Wells has written for years. Being a member of what are called ‘The Big Four’ I make a rule of never dealing with the work of the other three myself. It would not be becoming of me to do so. Moreover I could not possibly say what I think of Galsworthy.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
H. G. (Herbert George) Wells : The New Machiavelli
' This is really great, great in every dimension. [...] I have read the book ["The New Machiavelli"] yesterday and this evening I re-read it from p.290-504. I don't know what a "masterpiece" may be --but I know what masterwork is when I see it. And this is it.'