Herbert George Wells

HERBERT GEORGE WELLS Report for the English literature lesson HERBERT GEORGE WELLS 1866 1946 At the end of the 19th century people felt excited about the new discoveries of science, which seemed to promise so much for the future. Only few writers expressed this feeling so well or so imaginary as H.G.Wells. With the French writer Jules Verne he may fairly be called the father of science fiction.

It wasn t the only type of literature that he wrote. H.G.Wells was born at Bromley in Kent in 1886. He was the son of domestic servants and lived in poverty and hardship. At the age of 14 he was apprenticed to a draper at Windsor. Two years later he became a student assistant at Midhurst Grammar School. At 18 he won a scholarship to study biology at the

Normal School of Science, where T.H.Huxley was one of his teachers. In 1891 he made a marriage to his cousin Isabel Mary Wells but it wasn t successful and in 1895 he married Any Catherine Robins. This marriage was to be lasting. Wells used his knowledge of science as the starting point for a series of exciting fantastic stories.

His literary career began with the publication of his first novel The Time Machine in 1895. It was immediately successful, so he began a series of science fiction novels that revealed him as an original writer The Island of Doctor Moreau 1896, The Invisible Man 1897, The War of the Worlds 1898 and The First Men in the Moon 1901. For a time he acquired a reputation as a prophet of

the future. In The War in the Air he foresaw certain developments in the military use of aircraft. But his imagination flourished at his best in the astronomical fantasies of The First Men in the Moon and The War of the Worlds. He also wrote many short stories, which were collected in The Stolen Bacillus 1895 and Tales of Space and Time 1899.

Eventually, Wells decided to write comic novels of lower middle-class life. Because of the harshness of his early life and its working class background he knew a lot about the problems of ordinary people and wrote about their ambitions and disappointments in novels such as Kipps 1905 and The History of Mr.Polly 1910. These novels are full of humour and life. Wells felt much of the pessimism prevalent in 1890s.

In his short-term view, however, his study of biology led him that human society would evolve into higher forms. Having wrote Anticipations 1901, Mankind in the Making 1903 and A Modern Utopia 1905, he became a leading preacher of the doctrine of social progress. About this time, too, he became an active socialist, and in 1903 joined the Fabian Society. But soon he began to criticize its methods and quarreled with

G.B.Shaw and Beatrice Webb. This quarrel is retold in his novel The New Machiavelli 1911, in which Webbs are parodied as the Baileys. Wells was a socialist and he wrote many books about the history and science so that people would be able to understand the important ideas of modern world. These works include The Outline of History 1920, The

Science of Life 1931 and The Shape of Things to Come 1935. At the same time he continued to publish works of fiction in which his gifts of narrative and dialogue give away almost entirely to polemics. His sense of humour reappears, however in Experiment in Autobiography 1934. Fear of tragic wrong turning in the development of the human race, to which he had early given imaginative expression in the animal mutations of

The Island of Doctor Moreau, dominates the shirt novels and fables he wrote in the later 1930s. Wells was now ill and aging. With the outbreak of World War 2, he lost all confidence in the future, and in Mind at the End of its Tether 1945 he depicts a bleak vision of a world in which nature has rejected, and is destroying humankind. THE MAN WHO COULD WORK

MIRACLES by h.g.wells LITERARY ANALYSIFotheringay. The story take place in San Francisco in 1896, November. The story begins when Mr.Fotheringay was arguing with Mr.Beamish that there were no miracles in the world. But suddenly it turned out that Mr.Fotheringay could have worked miracles himself

He was surprised very much, more than others were. Mr.Fotheringay decided to go to the local minister Mr.Maydig. He showed to Mr.Maydig a few miracles and then minister decided to use his power in his own interests. In the end they stopped the rotation of the Earth and it led to a world catastrophe. Eventually,

Mr.Fotheringay wished that he would have lost his power and would have returned time back, when he was arguing with Mr.Beamish about miracles. It s a 3rd point narration with omniscient point of view. The narration is very emotional. I think so because the author comments on the characters with great emotions. This story is written in 3rd point narration, so it has lost a bit of emotionality and excitement. But it has gained objectiveness. The narrator is minor character and he just tells us about the events

of the story. The characterization of the characters is indirect. Wells shows us them in action, conversation but he doesn t tell us about them. Because of that we can t see author s attitude towards the main character. The author gives the description character s appearance in the traditional manner. Mr.Fotheringay isn t true-to-life character. He is presented in the development but in the end he becomes

the same man. Mr.Maydig is presented in the middle of the story, he is important character because in the end he made Mr.Fotheringay to stop the rotation of the Earth. I feel optimistic for the main character because he is independent, clever and has a will to live. List of literature