H.G. Wells: Another Kind of Life

by Michael Sherborne

An unlikely lothario, one of the most successful writers of his time, a figure at the heart of the age's political and artistic debates—H. G. Wells' life is a great story in its own right  When H. G. Wells left school in 1880 at 13 he seemed destined for obscurity—yet he defied expectations, becoming one of the most famous writers in the world. He wrote classic science-fiction tales such as The Time Machine , The Invisible Man , and The War of the Worlds ; reinvented the Dickensian novel in Kipps and The History of Mr Polly ; pioneered postmodernism in experimental fiction; and harangued his contemporaries in polemics which included two bestselling histories of the world. He brought equal energy to his outrageously promiscuous love life—a series of affairs embraced distinguished authors such as Dorothy Richardson and Rebecca West, the gun-toting travel writer Odette Keun, and Russian spy Moura Budberg. Until his death in 1946 Wells had artistic and ideological confrontations with everyone from Henry James to George Orwell, from Churchill to Stalin. He remains a controversial figure, attacked by some as a philistine, sexist, and racist, praised by others as a great writer, a prophet of globalization, and a pioneer of human rights. Setting the record straight, this authoritative biography is the first full-scale account to include material from the long-suppressed skeleton correspondence with his mistresses and illegitimate daughter. 

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction

408 pages, Hardcover

First published July 28, 2010

Reviews

[Paul Bryant · Rating 4 out of 5]

The father was a shopkeeper (china and sports goods) and a professional cricketer, he didn’t make much money, and the mother was 43 when HG Wells was born. There were two older brothers and a sister who had already died. He grew up in total obscurity, undersized and undernourished, left school at the age of thirteen; and he ended up one of the most famous writers on the planet. And when in his 70s he thought he would like to interview Roosevelt and Stalin, you know, put a few questions to them, well, that’s what he did. By that time, they wanted to meet him.

Once he got going, he didn’t stop, it just geysered forth. He started with science fiction, which wasn’t even a thing then, of course. There was one original idea after another – 12 books between 1895 and 1899 ! Here are four of them -

The Time Machine (1895).
The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896)
The Invisible Man (1897)
The War of the Worlds (1898)

But he was smart and he switched directions and started writing comic novels, then serious novels.* Then another change – he swerved into nonfiction about politics, world peace, the way to create a socialist utopia, that kind of thing, and he became what was called a social commentator and is now called an Influencer. People loved it! He would have been a top youtuber. Even though he had an unattractive high whiny voice! Then at age 54 he thought ok enough fooling around, let’s write a history of the entire world since the first single celled creature, so he took a year off and read everything and synthesized it all with his brain machine and wrote An Outline of History which was issued in monthly parts and then as a book and it made a fortune.

After that he decided to become a journalist, visiting anywhere he thought was interesting and knocking off a quick 150 page book about it.

HG WELLS : PLAYER

All his life he was a short tubby guy with a whiny voice who danced around the world in search of literary ladies who were in search of him, and there were plenty of them. He was a player. He always had a nice doormat wife at home bringing up the kiddies** and a girlfriend often in France or Russia who might have a kid too (say, Rebecca West) and another one lined up when girlfriend number one burned out. And he had some casual flings on the side too. Our biographer says, at one point :

he embarked on a series of outrageous love affairs that almost amounted to a kind of performance art

ONE OF HIS GIRLFRIENDS FINALLY DITCHES HIM

Curse and blast and shit the day on which we decided to live together, you swine, and the house you built, and what you did and what you are. Can’t that diabetes of yours carry you off at last! The time and nervous energy you make me waste! God damn you everlastingly!

And a little later :

I send you in parting my pious hope that your neuritis, your diabetes, your sclerosed lung and your one kidney will soon combine to put a definitive stop to the diarrhetic deluge of drivelling works with which you persist in swamping a long-suffering public – and so I end our mortally boring association.


HG WELLS : BEEN THERE, DONE THAT

He knew everybody – JM Barrie, DH Lawrence, Gissing, Conan Doyle, Joseph Conrad, Henry James (a particularly big mate) – but not just writers, he met Lenin, Stalin, Roosevelt (Theodore and FDR) , Chaplin, Booker T Washington, Huey P Long…

Joseph Conrad and I used to shoot at breakable floating targets, bottles chiefly, at Sandgate, and as I have got a steady finger on a trigger while he was a jumping bundle of nerves I got most of the bottles. As he had a great pride in being a wild, wild man while I was a meek stay-at-home, this annoyed him.

A FEW OTHER THINGS THAT CAUGHT MY EYE

He has a jauntiness about him that is still hard to resist. He wrote a book called Anticipations which he described in a letter as being

designed to undermine and destroy the monarchy, monogamy, faith in God and respectability – and the British Empire, all under the guise of a speculation about motor cars and electrical heating.

He could be weird – when his mother died he photographed her body “from several angles in close-up”.

He was controversial – one bigwig said about his novel Tono-Bungay “I would rather send a daughter of mine to a house infected with diphtheria or typhoid fever as put that book into her hands”.

He had some good ideas ! In 1924 he wrote a book in which

he advocates compulsory schooling up to at least the age of sixteen, nursery provision for four year olds and global conservation policies to protect whales, gorillas and elephants.

He had a great feud with Winston Churchill – in 1920 he visited the USSR and wrote a book about it – Churchill castigated him for “giving comfort to fanatics and murderers”. He responded by saying that Churchill was a menace to world peace and that he should remove himself from public office so that he could put his talents to better use as a painter.

PROLIFIC IN EVERY POSSIBLE SENSE

50 novels, umpty-ump nonfiction books, short stories, the unstoppable flood of Wellsiana until finally that tap got turned off in 1946 at the age of 79. I got to like him a lot. It was a great life.


*****


*After The History of Mr Polly in 1910 Michael Sherborne pretty much trashes every one of HG’s novels – this is him on page 266

as “The Dream” progresses the narrative voice diminishes into nagging and the plot into melodrama

HG wrote so many novels the world has been kind enough to forget completely!

**but she had her limits. He complained to his current girlfriend that his wife had the temerity to object when he tried to put a photograph of her on the wall.

[Robert Case · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a fascinating life! And what a prolific writer. As a youth I read his most enduring works, The Time Machine, The Invisible Man and of course The War of the Worlds, and then moved on to other things. I returned to his body of work because of my own later-in-life interest in bicycles. The title of choice was an early novel about a voyeuristic young man bicycling around England: "The Wheels of Chance." Apparently this same book inspired Woodrow Wilson to do the same when he studied in England as a young man.

In the late nineteenth century this two-wheeled machine offered mobility at a time when travel was a commodity reserved for aristocrats and the wealthy. By birth Wells was neither. But he saw the bicycle as a useful tool for pursuing the education that eventually became the launching pad for his writing career. He became so much more than "just" a prolific writer. H G Wells was one of the leading influencers of his time, a truly remarkable personality. His life was full of discourse and friendships with other authors and political leaders. Short in stature and with a paunch for a stomach, H G Wells loved women. And, they loved him in return. There were numbers of wives and lovers and children, legitimate and illegitimate; more than enough for interesting storytelling. But he never seemed to forget any of them. And I admire the efforts that he made to maintain those many and varied relationships with family and friends, so that they endured and evolved over his lifetime.

[Pete F · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this a fascinating biography of H G Wells, not least because I used to be quite a fan of wells, and reading this bio made me want to re-read some of his works and to read stories and other works that I had not read before. Most people nowadays who have heard of Wells, associate him with early science fiction, but although most of his science fiction would not stand up to scientific scrutiny now, and his supposedly utopian stories are more like dystopias, Wells was a man ahead of his time as well as being a man of his time, hence the limitations of his thinking. We all have those limitations, whether we realise it or not, and it is only with the benefit of hindsight that others can recognise this in books written a long time ago.

Despite this, I do enjoy his stories and also his novels, which many people tend to forget or dismiss. Apart from his science fiction/utopian stories, he wrote a number of novels which remind one of Dickens: Kipps, The History of Mr Polly, and Tono-Bungay, for example. Kipps, in particular, reminds me of Great Expectations, and may well have been influenced by that novel.

Although much of Wells' work now seems hopelessly dated, especially the utopian works, they are nevertheless worth a read, if only for the atmospherics. In particular, I like The Invisible Man and The Croquet Player. Of his social novels, The History of Mr Polly is my favourite, but I am currently reading Mr Britling Sees It Through.

Whatever his limitations as a man of his time, he remains, for some, as a prophet of things to come. Because although his utopian stories are hopelessly outdated, he did warn of ecological disaster long before anyone else, and he was a supporter of women's suffrage, a supporter of a world state and a socialist. His support of a world state may now seem outdated, but a scaled down version in the form of the European Union is a reality.

The man of his time was, for a while, a supporter of the Eugenics movement, but later came to reject this. He was also accused of anti-semitism in his own time and ours, but his criticism was more to do with Zionism than ethnicity or religion. He was also a serial adulterer, which some cynics might say was the real reason for his support of women's liberation! He wavered between atheism and religiosity, influenced by his mother who was a devout Protestant, and his father, who was a devout cricketer! The man of his time also supported the Great War, describing it as "the war to end war". Again, he was hopelessly wrong.

On the plus side, he was an early proponent of human rights, animal rights and an international movement to to regulate countries going to war, which became the League of Nations after WW1. That it, and its successor, the United Nations failed, was hardly Wells' fault! Wells was an early supporter of the Russian Revolution but became increasingly critical of the regime under Stalin. His novella, The Croquet Player, published in 1937, seems to be describing an atavistic humanity which may have been a reflection of the fascist movements growing all over Europe at that time. Indeed, Wells was on the Nazis' infamous 'Black List', of people to be got rid of if Britain was successfully invaded by Germany. He was also generous to his friends and the women he wronged.

My main criticism of the bio is that the author skims over some of Wells' more obscure works, but on the plus side, this is an otherwise very comprehensive bio, warts and all.

[Teemu Öhman · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love H. G. Wells’ early science fiction novels. However, I haven’t read his more humorous books, or his political writings. Thus, the bulk of his enormous life’s work is unknown to me. Also, this is the only biography about H. G. Wells that I have read, so I cannot say anything about how accurate or complete Michael Sherborne’s H. G. Wells – Another Kind of Life is.

What I do know is that Another Kind of Life at least seems to be very thoroughly researched. It contains excerpts from letters that have apparently never been published before, so there should be something new (at the time) even for Wells enthusiasts. With his poor(ish) childhood, somewhat changing views on religion, political activity and unstoppable sex drive Wells was such a fascinating character that the story never gets boring although there weren’t any great adventures in his life. It’s rather difficult to imagine how he managed to handle a wife and kids, an ex-wife, usually at least a couple of more permanent lovers (he had kids with two of them) at a time and an endless string of short-term relationships, meet world leaders like Roosevelt and Stalin and still write something like 50 novels and countless short stories, essays, pamphlets, etc. Although small in stature, Wells really was an impressive character.

The book is easy to read and I liked Sherborne’s dry sense of humour that occasionally manifested itself. Wells was such an active person in the worlds of literature and politics of the late 1800s and early 1900s that he had dealings with everybody. Based on my very casual knowledge of that era I didn’t always know who was the person that Sherborne (or Wells) was talking about. I was having a hard time just keeping track of Wells’ lovers. Thus, one thing I would have benefited from but didn’t have was a “who’s who” as an appendix.

Although Sherborne occasionally touches upon the legacy of Wells in the text, I think I would have enjoyed a Summary & legacy -type of a chapter at the end. Now the book ends with Wells’ death, followed by a few pages of biographical comments about his kids and lovers.

One thing worth noting about Another Kind of Life is that although there are only about 350 pages of body text, the book is actually much heftier than one would suppose based on that. I don’t know the word count, but with a more reader-friendly font size this could have been an almost 500-page book. In poor illumination and with tired eyes this can at times become a bit tricky to read.

Wells was an even more interesting person than I thought, and I’d like to read more of his works. Thus, I think Another Kind of Life did its job very well.

4.5/5

[Aria · Rating 2 out of 5]

TMI, & also, I really hate it when the author doesn't stop himself from coloring the subject with his own opinions. I didn't open the book to read about the author, after all. Leaning toward a 1-star, but there were moments where it was somewhat engaging. Those moments didn't last more than a page or two at most, unfortunately. Had to skim a lot. Writing style not the best.

[Maura Heaphy Dutton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent, excellent biography: well-researched, thorough and appreciative of Wells's great talents (while thoughtfully confronting and deconstructing some of his great flaws). Approaches its subject with a sense of humor that The Great Man would have appreciated (when he was a a good mood ...)

My take-away, as I finished Michael Sherborne's excellent biography (and something that, I think, Sherborne hints at in his subtitle) is that Herbert George Wells' greatest creation was himself. As the son (and grandson, and great-grandson) of members of the servant class, he was earmarked by the rigid class system of the time to be a servant himself, and destined by poor health and a distinctly un-robust constitution to be lucky if he survived long enough to marry as unhappily as his parents, and produce a couple more additions to the servant class ...

And Wells said "no." Bucking the system at every turn, Wells broke free of the limitations that his birth, class, and education, as well as cultural tastes and contemporary morality, tried to impose upon him. (Even the limitations of his own body: a less likely "Sex God" it would be very hard to imagine, whether we are talking about the weedy youth or the stout, balding older Wells. But this is no Harvey Weinstein, and however icky the details of Wells's womanizing can be (and trust me, they can be pretty icky ...), the simple fact is that the ladies who canoodled with Wells adored him, before during and even (on the whole) after their liaisons. Even Rebecca West, whose relationship with him (and their son) turned quite toxic, admitted that she would have been a much happier person if she had married him --if she could have prised him away from his forgiving wife Jane -- because he was the best man she had ever known. And Margaret Sanger (yes, that Margaret Sanger, American birth control campaigner, he had a on-going dalliance with her ...) said that she admired the way Wells's presence combined jocularity, brilliance, flirtatiousness and profundity, and noted that, to be equal to his company, 'you must pull yourself up, keep alive every second.'

... author, prophet, futurist, historian, culture warrior and womanizer. And this is a volume that does justice to to a man whose life was his own greatest work of art.

[Damon Young · Rating 4 out of 5]

In his unification of science and art, his rational utopianism, his hungry mobility, and guiltless sexual compulsion, Wells was unmistakably modern. His language lacked the avant-garde freshness of Joyce or Hemingway, but Sherborne reveals how Wells’ ideas were bold, his life audacious. It is an infectious vision.

In this spirit, if he cannot quite capture Wells’ own power, Sherborne writes very well – lucidly, warmly, and sometimes wittily. More importantly, the biographer conveys something perfectly Wellsian: enthusiasm. It’s clear that Sherborne cares deeply about his subject, achievements and age, and he reveals this without breathless hagiography. For this alone, the biography achieves something the author must welcome: this quietly smiling reader, reaching again, after twenty years, for his dusty copy of The Time Machine.

Read the full review here: http://meanjin.com.au/blog/post/blood...

[Kris Becker · Rating 4 out of 5]

This bio answered a lot of questions for me, it illuminated a lot of shadowy areas of my perception of this man's life and work. One of those Famous Men, Wells figured prominently in my modern-day dystopian novel on stories that affect reality. He had a unique mind, a forward-thinking perspective that saw both positives and negatives in future scenarios, and he wrote many stories with both potential outcomes: both utopian and dystopian. As much as a writer would like his/her story to stand alone, one cannot understand a work of fiction until one understands the writer, and a biography (ideally, many biographies) is a necessary complement to "fiction".

[Bob Gustafson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a pleasant non-academic rendering of the life of the author of "The Time Machine" and dozens of other works. It puts you in England in the latter half of the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth centuries. You read about Wells' working-class upbringing, his struggle to find his place in life, and his interests in science, literature, women, and political economy.

[Ian · Rating 1 out of 5]

written to be comprehensive, not to be read. Skimmed a lot. Did learn about HG Wells's time and life and lovers I did not know about.

[Maxx-Phillippe · Rating 2 out of 5]

A meticulously researched biography.....historical, and damn dry.

[Bookthesp1 · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent biography of Wells which isn't just a chronological trawl through his life and work but a deep dive into all aspects of his life and writing. There was the dilemma of being populist or modernist; the switches of genre from sci-fi to class based novels (he knew Gissing et al) as well as other non fiction writing and journalism. His constant adultery; affairs; love children and view of monogamy as seemingly unsatisfactory led to an occasionally fraught personal life and he treated so many women badly. As for the writing he supposedly predicted or anticipated so many things from the atom bomb to blitz from the air to global history and Labour politics. His prodigious energy reminded some of Dickens who also treated women badly at times. Sherborne is not afraid to voice an opinion and tries hard to source rumour; hearsay and the hidden bits of Wells' endless dalliances and dangerous liaisons . He also says thoughtful and useful things about the enormous output of Wells' writing life and compares and contrasts much of his work.

I had originally intended to read the new Claire Tomalin book on the early life of Wells though she found him so interesting that she wandered beyond her original brief and went well into his middle years. So he seems to have seduced her as well! Having read and enjoyed the Sherborne one wonders what she could add, apart of course for a vital female perspective.....Sherborne shows sympathy and empathy with some of his female "conquests" and his somewhat aghast at his sexual longevity. He also recognises Wells against the background of his life and I doubt there will be a better biography. Whether he deserves this level of fascination is another matter but his renaissance man tendencies and his messy life makes for an enthralling read.

[Almustafa Couch · Rating 2 out of 5]

An okay read, not brilliant, the author tended to slip into the (easily avoidable) fallacy of ad populism; saying that everyone knows that therefore it is true. It may or may not be the case,he just needs to provide some undeniable proof of his assertion (s). this fault did ruin a rather good history book (biography) on one of the best early science-fiction authors, and apart from that fault it would have received a greater rating. I would remind people that the assertion that the earth was flat was not considered as foolish a few centuries ago, and that arguing the contrary was considered as mad. If the author had worded the assertion (about Lenin) more carefully, it is fair to say that the book would have achieved a high rating and furthermore would have been considered much more historically accurate, having said that though it was interesting as a historical document with a single character as its main focus, so the fallacy was unnecessary.

[Henry Gormally · Rating 5 out of 5]

75th anniversary of Wells’ death

Brilliant biography!
Enjoyed this so much. Helped me to realise the huge impact Wells made in his lifetime. A great writer and a great humanitarian. Who would have guessed it!

[Heep · Rating 3 out of 5]

I would have liked to give this book a higher rating, if only that it demonstrates such prolific scholarship on its subject. The problem is that it is too prolific. The book is too long and too detailed. Virtually every book written by HG Wells is included sequentially with an included review. Unfortunately, the detail does not illuminate on its own and after a point added little to my appreciation or understanding of Wells as a person or histocical personage. The book truly suffers from not seeing the forest for the trees. It was entertaining in patches, and did help me better understand England at the turn of the last century. It has also inspired me to read some of the HG Wells classics, so all is not lost.

[Warren Gossett · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a vigorous exciting tour a writer spanning late Victorian times to World War II in Britain. Michael Sherborne gives an illuminating view of the writer and those interesting days. I am a fan of Well's science fiction writing. He has inspired so many versions and variations of Time Machines, Wars of the World and the Invisible Men.

[Dale Muckerman · Rating 3 out of 5]

I never knew how influential H. G. Wells was, not just in science fiction but also in his attitude on life, his thoughts about a global world and ecology, and in his very active life. I never realized how respected and controversial he was in his own day. He was kind of a celebrity back then.

[Craig Brown · Rating 4 out of 5]

Attempt to novelize his life almost worked - meticulous as mentioned by another, but to a fault at times - but still excellent