H. G. Wells

H. G. Wells (1866-1946) was an English writer whose scientific romances, beginning with The Time Machine (1895), helped to found modern science fiction; he also wrote social comedies, history and political works.

Herbert George Wells was born on 21 September 1866 in Bromley, Kent. He won a place at the Normal School of Science in London (later the Royal College of Science), where he studied biology under T. H. Huxley. After the success of The Time Machine he wrote a series of scientific romances: The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896), The Invisible Man (1897), The War of the Worlds (1898) and The First Men in the Moon (1901). He then turned to comic and social novels such as Kipps (1905), Tono-Bungay (1909) and The History of Mr Polly (1910), and later wrote the popular The Outline of History (1920). He was nominated four times for the Nobel Prize in Literature and is sometimes called a "father of science fiction", a title also given to Jules Verne and Hugo Gernsback. He died at his London home, 13 Hanover Terrace, on 13 August 1946.

For collectors. The Time Machine was serialised in The New Review from January to May 1895. The first book edition was published in New York by Henry Holt on 7 May 1895, followed by William Heinemann's London edition on 29 May 1895; the two texts differ, and almost all modern reprints follow Heinemann. The War of the Worlds ran in Pearson's Magazine in 1897, illustrated by Warwick Goble, before Heinemann published the first book edition in London on 19 January 1898, with Harper & Brothers as the American publisher. Open Library lists Henry Holt and Heinemann editions of The Time Machine from 1895.