H. G. Wells

H. G. Wells was a British writer and publicist, the foremost master of critical realism.

He was born on 21 September 1866 in the London suburb of Bromley, Kent. His father, Joseph Wells, and mother, Sarah Neale, had previously worked as a gardener and a maid on a wealthy estate and later became proprietors of a small china shop. However, the business brought in almost no income, and the family mainly lived on the money that his father, a professional cricket player, earned from the game.

When the boy was eight years old, he was “lucky,” as he himself put it, to break his leg. It was then that he developed a passion for reading. At the same age, Herbert Wells entered Mr. Thomas Morley’s Commercial Academy, which was supposed to prepare him for a career as a merchant. However, when Herbert was thirteen, his father broke his thigh, and cricket came to an end. His schooling was considered finished, and Herbert had to begin an independent life. He received his education at King’s College, University of London, which he graduated from in 1888. By 1891 he had earned two degrees in biology.

After an apprenticeship with a draper and work in a pharmacy, he was a schoolteacher, a teacher of the exact sciences, and an assistant to Thomas Huxley. In 1893 he took up journalism professionally.

From 1903 to 1909 Wells was a member of the Fabian Society, which advocated caution and gradualism in politics, science, and public life.

In 1895 Wells wrote his first work of fiction, the novel The Time Machine.

Wells lived in London and on the Riviera, often gave lectures, and traveled extensively. He was married twice: from 1891 to 1895 to Isabella Mary Wells, and from 1895 to 1927 to Amy Catherine (Jane) Robbins. Both his sons were born in the second marriage: George Philip Wells and Frank Richard Wells.

He died in London on 13 August 1946. At the funeral ceremony, John Boynton Priestley called Wells “a man whose word brought light into many dark corners of life.” According to his will, after cremation his sons