The success of Wells’s short stories encouraged him to write longer pieces, and he published his first novel, The Time Machine, in 1895 – launching his prolific literary career. He was the first to coin and use the term ‘time machine’ Milne once said that Wells had not been a good schoolmaster because he “was too clever and too impatient”.Īfter leaving teaching, Wells became a journalist, writing a prolific amount of short humorous articles for journals. Milne, the future author of Winnie-the-Pooh. Among Wells’s science students was John’s son, A. The school had just 13 students and was run out of John Milne’s home. By now he was a socialist and a member of the Fabian Society, and had written textbooks, short stories and reviews.įrom 1889-1890, Wells got a teaching post at Henley House School in London. He eventually won a scholarship to the Normal School of Science (now Imperial College) where his studied biology under famous zoologist T H Huxley. Milne was one of his studentsĪfter a brief apprenticeship to a draper, Wells became a student-teacher, spending time at various schools including at the National School in Wookey, Midhurst Grammar School and the Holt Academy in Wales. Right: c/o Library of the London School of Economics and Political Science. Left: A young Wells, “Bertie” as he was known, c. 1870s. Uppark had a magnificent library which Wells immersed himself in, reading many classic works including Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. His mother’s work as a lady’s maid at Uppark, a country house in Sussex, also had an impact. Wells soon became devoted to the other worlds and lives the books contained, stimulating his desire to write. This became a defining incident in his life – to pass the time, he read books from the local library, brought to him by his father. In 1874, Wells broke his leg, leaving him bedridden. A broken leg inspired Wells’s imagination Here are 10 facts about this iconic writer. As a futurist, he wrote many utopian works, foreseeing the advent of many inventions and imagining subjects we now commonly know of today – installing commonplace detail alongside a single extraordinary assumption. An outspoken socialist, Wells often sympathised with pacifist views (except at World War One’s outbreak) and was a somewhat prophetic social critic with progressive global visions. His novels of social realism about lower-middle-class English life led some to suggest he was a worthy successor to Charles Dickens. Often deemed ‘The Father of Science Fiction’, it was this genre he was primarily famous for – notably his books The Time Machine and The War of the Worlds. He wrote more than 50 novels, dozens of short stories, and non-fiction work on a range of topics including social commentary, politics, history and popular science. Herbert George Wells (1866-1946) was a prolific novelist, as well as a writer, historian, teacher and journalist.

H.G. Wells Short Stories by H.G. Wells