H.G. Wells

H.G.Wells

Godoy NataliaWang Wan Shu

Biography

• NAME: H.G. Wells• FULL NAME: Herbert George Wells• OCCUPATION: Author• BIRTH DATE: September 21, 1866• DEATH DATE: August 13, 1946• EDUCATION: Midhurst Grammar School, Normal

School of Science, Royal College of Science, London University

• PLACE OF BIRTH: Bromley, England, United Kingdom• PLACE OF DEATH: London, England, United Kingdom

Biography

• English novelist, journalist, sociologist, and historian.

• Wells wrote over a hundred of books, about fifty of them are novels.

• Wells was a very accomplished fiction and non-fiction writer. He wrote for more than sixty years and his early science fiction novels earned him the title of “The Father of Science Fiction.”

Life

• Father: Joseph Wells. • Mother: Sarah Neal.• Fourth and last child.• First, he started reading books from the local library and

then from his mother’s work place.• In his early teens, Wells also went to work as a draper's

assistant. • He won a scholarship to the Normal School of Science

where he learned about physics, chemistry, astronomy and biology, among other subjects.

• In 1883, Wells became a teacher/pupil at Midhurst Grammar School.

Life

• Wells also devoted much of his time to becoming a writer. During college, he published a short story about time travel called "The Chronic Argonauts," which foreshadowed his future literary success.

Marriage

• In 1891, Wells married his cousin, Isabel Mary Wells, but the union didn't last.

• Wells married with Amy Catherine "Jane" in 1895 after he officially divorced Isabel.

• He and Jane had two children together, sons George Phillip and Frank.

• A free thinker about sex and sexuality, Wells did not let marriage stop him from having other relationships.

• (Video min6)

LoversAmber Reeves

Rebecca West

Anna-Jane Blanco-White

Anthony West

Beliefs.• He joined in 1903 the socialist Fabian Society.• Wells soon quarreled with the society's leaders,

among them George Bernard Shaw.• He used to believe that war was a lesson for the

world.• Wells believed in the theory of eugenics. In 1904 he

discussed a survey paper by Francis Galton, co-founder of eugenics, saying "I believe .. It is in the sterilisation of failure, and not in the selection of successes for breeding, that the possibility of an improvement of the human stock lies.“(Video min12)

• The war itself increased the pessimistic side of his nature. He also came to call the era "The age of frustration”.

• Some critics speculated that Wells's declining health shaped this prediction of a future without hope.

Works

•His science fiction stories have been filmed many times.•From 1893 Wells devoted himself entirely to writing. Lung problems and a prognosis that he would die, added an extra urgency to a tremendous four-year burst of creativity, during which he produced his famous "scientific romances"

War of the worlds• “No one would have believed in the last

years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water”. (Video)

In 1938 Orson Wells broadcasted The War of the Worlds on radio claiming aliens landed in New Jersey and caused a massive panic because the format was that of news bulletins.

Authors…

• He was influenced by…•  H.T. Huxley, Plato, Jonathan Swift, Jules

Verne, Edgar Allen Poe, Charles Dickens, Victor Hugo, and Rudyard

• He influenced…• Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Aldous

Huxley, C. S. Lewis, Alan Moore, George Orwell, Frank R. Paul, etc.

Interesting facts I

• His second wife was his student. • His lover Rebecca West was a feminist.• Science fiction was the least of his writings, yet

is what he is best known for. • After settling in Sandgate on the Kent coast,

Wells slowly gained his physical health, and acquired a lifelong passion for cycling.

"Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race," he said.

Interesting Facts II

• West and Wells called themselves "panther" and "jaguar". Their son Anthony West later wrote about his parent’s difficult relationship in Aspects of a Life (1984).

• In his novels Wells used his two wives, Amber Reeves, Rebecca West, Odette Keun and all the passing mistresses as models for his characters.

• Wells was a diabetic and a co-founder in 1934 of what is now Diabetes UK, the leading charity for people living with diabetes in the UK.

Death

• He died of unspecified causes on 13 August 1946 at his home at 13 Hanover Terrace, Regent's Park, London. In his preface to the 1941 edition of The War in the Air, Wells had stated that his epitaph should be: "I told you so. You damned fools”. But his wish was not granted as he was cremated.

• Many of his predictions for the future came true: "the Father of Futurism” but today is best known as "the Father of Science Fiction." 

Thank You!!

Sources

• http://www.omg-facts.com/History/H-G-Wells-The-Famous-Science-Fiction-Wri/53489#OkJwy3zVycJf1o3o.99

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bh_np0tzbkI• http://www.youtube.com/watch?

NR=1&v=9kEpCqvhk4E&feature=endscreen• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKHfuMH4Yxo• http://www.biography.com/people/hg-wells-39224• http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/hgwells.htm• http://www.fourmilab.ch/etexts/www/warworlds/b1c1.html• http://www.greatvalueonlinebooks.com/

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