This collection of H.G. Wells's correspondence draws on over 50
archives and libraries worldwide, including the papers of Wells's
daughter by Amber Reeves. The book contains over 2,000 letters, and
while a few are business - to publishers, agents and secretaries -
the majority are much more personal. Wells's private correspondence
extends from letters to President Franklin 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 correspondence too with his many
female friends and lovers, among them Rebecca West, Eileen Power,
Gertrude Stein, Marie Stopes, Lilah MacCarthy and Dorothy
Richardson. For example, a letter from Moura Budberg, with whom
Wells had a long-standing affair, which announces that she is
pregnant by him and about to have an abortion, reveals how an
advocate of birth control is himself caught out. Wells also enjoyed
correspondence with the press, particularly during the two World
Wars, and with various BBC officials and people who worked on his
films. Some of his letters on the controversies of free love,
socialism, birth control, the Fabian Society, and the nature of the
curriculum of the new London University in the 1890s are included.
Interspersed chronologically with Wells's letters is a small
selection of about 40 letters to Wells, where letters from him are
not extant. Among these are letters from Ray Lankester, Joseph
Conrad, C.G. Jung, Trotsky, Hedy Gatternigg (the woman who
attempted suicide in Wells's flat), and J.C. Smuts. The letters are
arranged in these periods: Volume 1 1878-1900; Volume 2 1901-1912;
Volume 3 1913-1930; and Volume 4 1930-1946. H.G. Wells's works
include The Time Machine (1895), The Invisible Man (1897), The War
of the Worlds (1898), The History of Mr Polly (1910), and A Short
History of the World (1922).
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