H. G. Wells on Thinking and Grasping the Truth

“The forceps of our minds are clumsy things and crush the truth a little in the course of taking hold of it.”

— H. G. Wells

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H. G. Wells' Biography

H. G. Wells was born in Bromley, Kent, England, on Sept. 21, 1866. His father was a shopkeeper in a small way and a professional cricketer; his mother served from time to time as housekeeper at the nearby estate of Uppark ("Bladesover" in Tono-Bungay). Though Wells attended Morley's School in Bromley, his real education came from omnivorous reading, a habit formed in 1874 while he was laid up for some months with a broken leg. Between 1880 and 1883 he spent most of his time as a draper's apprentice in Windsor and Southsea, a way of life for which he later recorded his profound detestation in Kipps. After a year as a teacher in a private school, he won a scholarship to the Normal School of Science in South Kensington in 1884. There he made a promising start as a student under Thomas Henry Huxley, but his interest faltered in the following year, and he left without a degree in 1887. He then taught in private schools for four years, not taking his B.S. degree until 1890.

The year 1891 saw Wells established in London, teaching in a correspondence college, married to his cousin Isabel, and the author of a remarkable article on "The Rediscovery of the Unique" in the Fortnightly Review. After much writing on educational subjects, he began his sensational literary career with The Time Machine in 1895. Meanwhile, he had given up teaching and had left Isabel for one of his brightest students, Amy Catherine ("Jane") Robbins, whom he married in 1895. There followed a series of scientific romances (most notably The Island of Dr. Moreau, 1896; The Invisible Man, 1897; The War of the Worlds, 1898; The First Men in the Moon, 1901; and The War in the Air, 1908), which form the most familiar part of his work to modern readers. But he grew dissatisfied with the limitations imposed by this kind of writing, and in 1900 he moved into the novel proper with Love and Mr. Lewisham, a story of his student days at South Kensington. On this and particularly on Kipps (1905), Tono-Bungay (1909), and The History of Mr. Polly (1910), his serious literary reputation primarily depends.

Biography written by Gordon N. Ray in the Encyclopedia Americana. For more information on this online reference, visit Grolier.Online. (Source: Scholastic Corporation)

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