John S. Partington, ed., H. G. Wells's Fin-de-Siècle: Twenty-first Century Reflections on the Early H. G. Wells (Peter Lang 2007) ISBN 9783631571118

The essays contained in this collection focus on the early H. G. Wells, the scientific romancer, the comic novelist and the young author discovering the literary élite. Written at the crossroads of a new century, the authors of these essays use their own fin-de-siècle experiences to look back one hundred years and critically assess the writings of an earlier fin-de-siècle. With seven chapters dealing with The Time Machine, The Wheels of Chance, The Island of Doctor Moreau, The War of the Worlds, Tono-Bungay and The History of Mr Polly, readers receive a detailed overview of Wells's literary output between 1895 and 1910. Two further chapters treat Wells's literary friendships, assessing his personal and professional relationships with the Victorian realist, George Gissing, and the pioneering modernist, Joseph Conrad, while the final chapter reveals Wells as a 'time traveller', employing poststructuralist techniques fifty years before that expression was coined. http://www.peterlang.com/index.cfm?vSiteName=PDFResult.cfm&vItem=57111&vLang=E

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Table of Contents

• John S. Partington, 'Introduction'
• Katrina Harack, 'Limning the Impossible: Time Travel, the Uncanny and Destructive Futurity in H. G. Wells's The Time Machine'
• Nick Redfern, 'Abjection and Evolution in The Island of Doctor Moreau'
• Kimberly Jackson, 'Vivisected Language in H. G. Wells's The Island of Doctor Moreau'
• Brett Davidson, 'The War of the Worlds Considered as a Modern Myth'
• Hiroshi So, 'The Wheels of Chance and the Discourse of Improvement of Health'
• Barbara Bond, 'H. G. Wells's Tono-Bungay as a Reflection of Its Time'
• Kevin Swafford, 'Aesthetics, Narrative and the Critique of Respectability in The History of Mr Polly'
• Simon J. James, '"The Truth About Gissing": Reassessing the Literary Friendship of George Gissing and H. G. Wells'
• Linda Dryden, 'H. G. Wells and Joseph Conrad: A Literary Friendship'
• Sylvia Hardy, 'H. G. Wells the Poststructuralist'

John S. Partington, ed., The Wellsian: Selected Essays on H. G. Wells (Equilibris 2003) ISBN 9059760018 (HB); 9059760026 (PB)

H.G. Wells (1866-1946) was a figure of many interests and talents. His writing career spanned an incredible 55 years, and took the form of essays, novels, science fiction, short stories, textbooks, speculative prophecy, utopias, journalism, letters and autobiography. As well as being prolific and varied, Wells has also had a lasting influence on subsequent generations of thinkers and writers, including George Orwell, C. S. Lewis, Aldous Huxley, Olaf Stapledon and J. B. Priestley. His influence is felt in the genre of science fiction, in the promotion of human rights and in his ideas on world governance.

In The Wellsian: Selected Essays on H.G. Wells, John S. Partington brings together a selection of the finest articles published in The Wellsian, the journal of the H. G. Wells Society, from 1981 to the present. The volume covers a wide breadth of Wells's work and thought, with essays from Lyman Tower Sargent on utopianism, Patrick Parrinder on The Time Machine, David Lake's textual analysis of the scientific romances, Michael Sherborne on Wells and Plato, and many others. With The Time Machine, The Island of Doctor Moreau, The War of the Worlds, The Sea Lady, The Food of the Gods and The Door in the Wall all receiving detailed attention, this volume promises to be a worthy memorial to the first twenty-five years of The Wellsian. As well as celebrating Wells's greatest literary achievements, it explores the philosophical basis of his thought and, through several comparative studies, takes an interdisciplinary approach to his aesthetic concerns. http://www.equilibris.nl/Wells_press_release.pdf

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Table of Contents

• John S. Partington, 'Introduction'
• Katalin Csala-Gáti and János I. Tóth, 'The Socio-biological and Human-ecological Notions in The Time Machine'
• Patrick Parrinder, 'The Time Machine: H.G. Wells’s Journey Through Death'
• John Hammond, 'The Island of Doctor Moreau: A Swiftian Parable'
• Roslynn Haynes, 'The Unholy Alliance of Science in The Island of Doctor Moreau'
• Patricia Kerslake, 'Moments of Empire: Perceptions of Kurd Lasswitz and H. G. Wells'
• Brett Davidson, 'Wells, the Artilleryman and the Intersection on Putney Hill'
• Richard Law, 'The Narrator in Double Exposure in The War of the Worlds'
• Leon Stover, 'H. G. Wells and The Sea Lady – A Platonic Affair in the “Great Outside”?'
• Bruce Sommerville, 'A Tissue of Moonshine: The Mechanics of Deception in The Sea Lady'
• Charles De Paolo, 'H. IV / Somatrem: H. G. Wells’s Speculations upon Endocrinology'
• Laura Scuriatti, 'A Tale of Two Cities: H. G. Wells’s The Door in the Wall, Illustrated by Alvin Langdon Coburn'
• David Lake, 'The Current Texts of H. G. Wells’s Early Science Fiction Novels: Situation Unsatisfactory'
• Michael Sherborne, 'Wells, Plato, and the Ideal State'
• Lyman Tower Sargent, 'The Pessimistic Eutopias of H. G. Wells'
• Notes on Contributors
• Bibliography