1 - The romances of the 1890s: The Time Machine, The Island of Dr Moreau, The War of the World

Summary

The emergent writer, 1866–1900

Herbert George Wells was born in Bromley, Kent, in 1866, the youngest child of a struggling shopkeeper, Joseph Wells, who had earlier been a gardener and spent as much time as he could picking up small fees as a cricket coach. Wells's mother, Sarah, was a cut above his father socially, being a former lady's maid to Miss Fetherstonhaugh of Up Park, near Petersfleld. Her social and religious attitudes had a crucial bearing on Wells's own outlook. He was brought up to hate and fear the working class; his mother was determined that he should be a ‘gentleman’ and should be kept apart from rough and common boys. Also, she was a strict Protestant with a firm belief in Hell; this faith in an apocalyptic tradition was undoubtedly transmitted to Wells, providing an unconscious pattern which recurs in his prophetic writings. Wells writes about his parents leaving service to set up their ‘unsuccessful crockery shop’ in terms which suggest that he always knew, as a child, that his parents' situation was hopeless, and at the same time recognised that his own talent was in a way fostered by the circumstances of the parental home. Food was short in the shabby living quarters behind the shop but there was always plenty to read, and as a child Wells read ‘everything’.