The Correspondence of H G Wells

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Editor: David C Smith
Consulting Editor: Patrick Parrinder

This is the first major scholarly collection of the correspondence of H G Wells (1866–1946), one of the most prolific and significant writers of the twentieth century. The collection draws on over 50 archives and libraries throughout the world, many of them newly discovered, including the recently deposited papers of Wells's daughter by Amber Reeves.

The edition contains 2,800 letters, fewer than 100 of which have previously been published. Letters currently available in other scholarly editions (such as those to George Bernard Shaw and Arnold Bennett) have been deliberately excluded, except where their inclusion seemed essential. A few of the letters are business letters to publishers, agents and secretaries, but the majority are much more personal.

Wells's private correspondence extends from letters to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Prime Ministers Winston Churchill and A J Balfour to persons such as 'Mark Benney', who wrote novels based on his life in the slums and his time in prison. There is rich correspondence too with his many female friends and lovers, among them Rebecca West, Eileen Power, Gertrude Stein, Marie Stopes, Lillah MacCarthy and Dorothy Richardson.

• Interspersed chronologically is a small selection of about 40 letters to Wells, where letters from him are not extant.

Contents

Correspondents include:
C Aberconway; Abortion Law Reform Association; St John Adcock; Janet Adchurch; Richard Acland; Herbert Agar; C K Aldington; Lord Allan of Hurtwood; Grant Allen; Amalgamated Press; E N Andrade; D Appleton; Mrs E Arias; Cynthia Asquith; Enid Bagnold; James Barrie; Mary Barrie; Vernon Barlett; W Baxter; Marie Beets; Hilaire Belloc; Edward Benes; Arnold Bennett; 'Mark Benney'; Anna Jane Blanco-White; Ernest Bloch; Daisy Blumenfeld; R D Blumenfeld; Charlotte Boucher; Leon Bourgeois; Brendan Bracken; William Briggs; Fenner Brockway; Curtiss Browne; Lewis Browne; A T Bryant; Moura Budberg; Amy Burgess; C W Bursell; E C Budsley; Ritchie Calder; Moberly Call; P Casenove; Edward Carpenter; G F C Catlin; J Chambrum; G K Chesterton; Mrs G K Chesterton; Abel Chevally; Clem. Churchill; Winston Churchill; Churchill Club; Hugh Clegg; Edw. Clodd; Bainbridge Colby; W M Colles; Sir Godfrey Collins; E Connell; Joseph Conrad; Janes Collidge; Charles A Dana; Mrs Darwin-Scott; A M Davies; Antoine Delfosse; J M Dent; G W Denton; Victor Desnai; Charles Didier; Aurthur Conan Doyle; Theo Dreiser; James Nicol Dunn; Lord Dunsany; Max Eastman; St John Ervine; Lord Esher; I A Evans; F A H Eyle; Lady Fergeson; Victor Fisher; Isabel Fowler-Smith; Hamilton Fyffe; A G Gardiner; Ada Galsworthy; J Galsworthy; Mrs Gatternigg; Martha Gellhorn; Aidin Georges; George Gissing; Victor Gollancz; S E Gossse; Graham Greene; John Gregory; R A Greagory; E Haden Guset; Harold Guest; J B S Haldane; J E Haldeman; F C Happold; Thomas Hardy; Mrs Thomas Hardy; Alf. Harmsworth; Fred Harrison; F H Hayward; Thomas Hayward; Elizabeth Healey; F J Heinemann; W H Henley; F N Heuffer; Henry Hick; A P Herbert; Lord Holder; J H Horrabin; T H Humblestone; Violet Hunt; Bluebell M Hunter; Julian Huxley; T H Huxley; Holbrook Jackson; Edgar Jepson; Sir F Joseph; James Joyce; C G Jung; Harold Keble; Odette Keun; Alexandra Kollentai; S S Koteliansky; Florence Lamont; T Lamont; Ray Lankester; John Lane; Harold Laski; R D Lawrence; Sinclair Lewis; Wyndham Lewis; Leon M Lion; A D Linsay; Walter Lippmann; Anita Loos; David Low; Sydney Low; David Lubin; E V Lucas; Joseph McCabe; S S McClure; Katherine Mansfield; Aylmer Maude; F Macmillan; Ivan Maisky; Hilda Matheson; Penular Maxwell; H JF Miles; J Christmos Moller; Sir Thomas Moore; Moscow Academy of Sciences; G J Moyer; J Middleton Murry; W G Munro; R Mudie-Smith; Gilbert Murray; A S Neill; E Nesbit; Henry Newbolt; H Newman; C R Hogden; Lady Oxford; V Pagen (Vernon Lee); Coventry Patmore; E R Pease; J B Pinker; Ezra Pound; Eileen Power; J B Priestly; S J Prior; Henry Quilter; Lady Randolph; Herbert Read; Amber Reeves; Grant Richards; Ellis Roberts; J W Robertson-Scott; A C Robbins; Robbie Ross; Mrs Theodore Roosevelt; F D Roosevelt; W Rotherstein; Cosmo Rowe; Wiliam Rust; Margaret Sanger; Siegfried Sassoon; Thomas Seecombe; Lance Seiveking; Clifford Sharpe; G B Shaw; Clement Shorter; A T Simmons; Winnifred Simmons; Upton Sinclair; Marc Slonimsky; J C Smuts; Olaf Stapledon; Gertrude Stein; George Stirling; Marie Stopes; Benjamin Swift; F Swinnerton; Mary C Terrell; Alex Thompson; Dorothy Thompson; Ernst Toller; R G Trevelyan; Leon Trotsky; Stanley Unwin; G Wallas; Countess Warwick; A P Watt; Beatrice Webb; Sydney Webb; Francis Weiss; Orson Welles; Frank Wells; Fred Wells Geoffrey Wells; Gip Wells; Joseph Wells; Sarah Wells; Rebecca West; J E Wilkinson; George Wyndham; I Zangwill

Correspondence with the press include:
Academy; Adelphi; Advertisers Weekly; Bookman; Bristol Daily Mercury; British Weekly; Cassells; Catholic Herald; Chicago Tribune; Countryman; Daily Chronicle; Daily Express; Daily Herald; Daily Mail; Daily News; Daily Worker; Education; Educational Times; English Review; Euston Morning News; Evening Standard; Eye Witness; Fortnightly Review; Freewoman; The Friend; G K's Weekly; Glasgow Daily Record; Grand Magazine; Grocers Assistant; Izvestia; Jewish Chronicle; Justice; Labour Leader; Lancashire Daily Post; The Listener; Literature; London Mercury; Manchester Courier; Morning Post; The Nation; Nature; New Age; New English Weekly; New Statesman; New York Times; New Witness; New Chronicle; North Devon Herald; Pall Mall Gazette; Pearsons; Saturday Review; The Spectator; The Tablet; The Times; Times Literary Supplement; Tribune; Truth; Westmoreland Gazette; Yorkshire Evening Post

Reviews

‘Smith has done a fine, tactful and prodigiously industrious job…. The footnotes are modest and helpful, the indexing sound. And through the pages Wells comes multifariously, outrageously, seductively and toweringly alive.’
– Eric Korn, The Guardian

‘David C Smith, the editor of this, the first scholarly edition of Wells’s correspondence, has drawn extensively on the large and under-exploited Wells archive at the University of Illinois and dozens of other sources to provide an essential resource for the study of this colossal but difficult figure. In four volumes, covering sixty-six years, 2,798 items and hundreds of correspondents, this is an invaluable compendium.’
– Simon J James, The Times Literary Supplement

Related titles

• British Future Fiction, 1700–1914

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