I enjoyed this biography of the author H. G. Wells. The book concentrates on Wells' early sad life and how it influenced his writings. I learned a lot about Wells reading this book. I was not familiar with many of his early writings or how much he wrote. I did not know much about his personal life either. Wells' unconventional upbringing was to influence his unconventional relationships as well. It was interesting to see how all this led to the classics he is famous for. The book was well written and easy to read. Enjoy

This well written biography about H. G. Wells was fascinating. I have read some of his better-known books and I never knew he had written so many books. Not just fiction and science fiction but also nonfiction. He’s also a bit of a creep. When he married his second wife, he told her he was going to have affairs. And then he did, including the 19-year-old daughter of their friends. No mistaking he was very smart, maybe a genius, but seems a bit creepy. He loved to play agents and publishers against each other to get published. Since I knew nothing about Wells, I found the biography fascinating, if a little long.

This is a great read for any fans of H.G Wells' work and the cultural/scientific/historic context in which he was writing. The author shines a new light on H.G Wells' career and adds an element of depth which allows for a greater appreciation of his later novels.

What sort of person is behind the creative and far-flung sci-fi and fantasy of such classics as The Time Machine, The Island of Doctor Moreau, and The War of the Worlds? I was curious, too, so I eagerly took up this latest of Claire Tomalin’s biographies to read about the early life of a man who is one of literature’s greatest.

Herbert George Wells nicknamed Buss and also Bertie was the third and last child and was born into a family that struggled with their shop in Bromley. By the time he came along, his father who lived for Cricket and time down at the pub and a tired out religious mother who wanted a girl baby didn’t have much interest in their children though it was never abusive and Buss loved both parents to their deaths. His older brothers were apprenticed off as drapers and young Buss attended the local school. He was encouraged to see himself as middle class by his mother and to look down on the poor kids, though in truth the family was barely making it. A serious injury that laid him up for a long time was the big start to his interest in books and he wrote and finished a book when he was eleven. This first tale showed the promise of his later talent and the witty and creative mind behind it.

Further changes including deeper poverty for the family was to come, but HG Wells had a brilliant mind and that enabled him to keep going with school on scholarships and encounter influential and wealthy people. Meanwhile, he had decided his mother’s fervent admiration of Queen Victoria and the royal family as well as her strong religious bent were not for him. He also seemed to early on show a sexual interest in the opposite sex that would color the rest of his life when he married twice, but was always having an affair. His view of literature as a job that he loved rather than lofty art set him against several of his fellow contemporary authors and his political views earned him just as many heated encounters. Scholarly text books and histories along with philosophical society membership would show him to be a legit mind and able to become someone one who rubbed elbows with the big and influential names of the day, but was himself classless in the eyes of others.

So atheist, republican, hedonist, and socialist were tags he wore and all the while he was brilliant and one of the most influential writers of the late Victorian and early Edwardian ages. His futuristic sci-fi and fantasies were often scarily right on the nose and it was only after the Great War and the years leading into the second World War that he lost a bit of something in his writing though he was still prolific to his death.

I confess I knew next to nothing about HG Wells when I picked up this book. I was equal parts interested in getting his story to see who came up with those amazing stories that came out of the Victorian period as well as finally try Claire Tomalin’s books. I’ve heard so much about other biographies she has done and want to delve into her backlist at some point.

But, HG Wells… he was a surprise. Not sure what I was expecting, but he was a daring one and didn’t conform to the social mores of his time. I guess someone who is willing to crossover lines and be open like that is exactly the sort who could write about airplanes before they existed, time travel, shape shifting, and aliens.

The biographic style of writing was straight forward and drew on several sources to give a well-rounded picture of HG Wells. I did bog down a bit in the philosophical stuff and preferred the life narrative. It doesn’t delineate his entire life and only detailed it out into his forties though the last chapter does sum up his later years and mostly his engagements and correspondence with famous fellow writers and his quirky love affairs. He seems to have really respected and loved his second wife though he couldn’t stop wanting and taking other women. Friend or foe, those who knew him admitted to his brilliance with the pen and his strong personality.

So, I have a much better picture of such a great classic writer and that his life was often as exciting as his books. This didn’t read swiftly and I had to stop for breaks now and then, but it was enlightening as well as had me eager to reach for an HG Wells book. I recommend the author for a well-written literary bio and I recommend this one if the reader wants a deep background of HG Wells.

H.G. Wells was fascinated by the explosion of scientific and technological discoveries at the tail end of the Victorian period. During this time, he was also starting to clarify his understanding of England’s social tensions. Wells realized that these two interests could be linked. Science, the author believed, could solve humanity’s problems. Divisions based upon class, nationality, or religious identity could be overcome, he argued, by the creation of a single world government rooted in socialism and led by rational experts trained in the sciences.

Wells also combined his political ideology and scientific thinking in the “scientific romances” he wrote in the first half of his life. In 1895, he published The Time Machine, telling the story of a scientist’s travels to a society far in the future where humans had evolved into two groups: the weak but privileged leisure class of the Eloi and the brutish Morlocks who labored underground, just as England’s poor found employment laboring as miners in coal pits or as servants “below stairs.” By the end of the decade, Wells had published The Island of Doctor Moreau, The Invisible Man, The War of the Worlds, and other novels that not only entertained readers but put forth an argument for both the importance of science and socialism.

These interpretations of Wells, common in previous studies of his life, are not acknowledged by biographer Claire Tomalin in The Young H.G Wells, her new biography of the writer. In her subtitle, she promises to explain to readers how the Victorian author was “Changing the World.” Unfortunately, her narrative does address this important issue. Instead, Tomalin sticks to a very careful recitation of facts...

See full review forthcoming in the Washington Independent Review of Books.

Claire Tomalin’s biography of the ‘young’ Wells offers a complicated man. His rich imagination gave us iconic novels. He developed his own political and social philosophy and lifestyle. He was a man who tried to do too much, curtailing his work from perfection, and he was a man I often did not like.

He had my sympathy when reading of his early years, the problems in his family and his struggles with ill health. Like so many of his generation, he took up socialism as a vehicle for reform, and also ideas of equality and free love. And there is where I did not care for him, his seeking personal sexual satisfaction without responsibility to his mistresses (and resulting children). Yet, he seemed to be irresistible to women of intelligence and social standing, attracted to his fame or personal charisma.

Unlike other biographies I have recently read, I did not feel the author demonstrated an attachment to her subject. His life is competently laid out, the details of his writing and publishing life, his relationships with family, fellow writers, and women, his internal life and thoughts are all there. I did not feel the love and respect some writers allow to show about their subject.

I received a free egalley from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

The name H.G. Wells is more widely known than the names of other literary masters of the same era, if but for the movies based on H.G. Wells’ titles. He was a science fiction writer whose works The Time Machine and War of the Worlds offer readers escapism, thrills, and enough scientific foundation to have made him qualify as a visionary. Tomalin demonstrates Wells’ hold on the young in her preface by describing how George Orwell, as a boy at boarding school, kept borrowing (sometimes without permission) his friend Cyril Connolly’s (editor and essayist) copy of a book by Wells.


Tomalin prepares us in her remark that the boys did not know (as we may not know) that Wells was an atheist, a socialist and a republican. It did not matter to them because his futuristic scientific world full of possibilities seized upon the imagination. We can relate.


The young Wells’ history is unexpected and endears him to us, which is important, for his treatment of others—particularly lovers and wives—can gall. The highly successful 19th century white male writer was the rock star of his day, so he could get away with behavior that would not brand him as a cad and a bounder in his time.


In some ways, this might as well be a biography of significant writers and thinkers of the late 19th/turn of the 20th century, for the portrait Tomalin paints of Beatrix Webb (née Potter) is as fascinating as the one she colors in of Wells. I loved her apology for following the “young” Wells all the way to his death. Her excuse was the adolescent behavior that gripped him throughout his life. Agreed.


It is charming to find Wells a hypocrite. Such creativity cannot be without flaw. If you are a reader of 19th century writers, you will value Tomalin’s exposé of the ever-transmuting relationships that existed between Webb, Wells, Shaw, Tolstoy, Henry James and more. My one critique is with the sub-title. To show how he “chang[ed] the world” would entail more of a textual analysis whereas this is a biography of success, ego and relationships.

Despite Tomalin's clear appreciation for Wells the writer, Wells the human doesn't come across as at all likeable in this. Tomalin presents a thorough portrait of an entitled hedonist who's completely oblivious to those who have to deal with him. Very, very detailed. Not in a graphic way, but there's enough here to present the idea that the man wasn't as good as his books.

Only negatives about the bio for me were that (1) front end early life stuff seemed to go a bit and (2) the book seems to get a bit tangential when discussing his social club. Americans might find it too British (details include proper names for ordinary houses), but given that Wells is a British subject matter we should probably get over that.

[this review also appears on Good Reads]

Very interesting portrait of a visionary writer. H. G. Wells is best remembered as futurist writer, predicting many of the inventions and struggles of the 20th and 21st century. Claire Tomalin is one of the premier biographers of writers and she doesn’t disappoint in this new work. Her subject led a fascinating life and seemed to be on a first name basis with almost every other great writers of his era. The story about his years with the Fabian Society was particularly interesting and well presented. Would recommend to anyone with an interest in the author, my only wish was that it would have covered his whole life instead of just the first forty years.