H. G. Wells

A collection of short stories: "The Crystal Egg", "The Star", "A Story of the Stone Age", "A Story of the Days to Come" & "The Man who could Work Miracles"

The protagonist of The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman is Lady Harman, n e Ellen Sawbridge. The moral, emotional, and intellectual conflicts that this tall, sensitive, graceful woman confronts arise in the context of a loveless marriage with Sir Isaac Harman, a self-made man who has grown rich as the proprietor of International Bread and Cake Stores and Staminal Bread. Sir Isaac meets his future wife when she is only seventeen and still a student in a boardinghouse in Wimbledon; she marries him largely out of pity. But the marriage is not a happy one, despite great wealth and the birth of four children. Sir Isaac is inherently domineering, and in an age of Suffragettes he encounters a desire for greater freedom in his wife. The plot of the novel turns on Lady Harman's relationship with George Brumley (invariably "Mr. Brumley" in the text), a successful genteel novelist whose wife has died three and a half years earlier.

The New Machiavelli purports to be written in the first person by its protagonist, Richard "Dick" Remington, who has a lifelong passion for "statecraft" and who dreams of recasting the social and political form of the English nation. Remington is a brilliant student at Cambridge, writes several books on political themes, marries a wealthy heiress, and enters parliament as a Liberal influenced by the socialism of a couple easily recognizable as the Webbs, only to go over to the Conservatives. Remington undertakes the editing of an influential political weekly and is returned to parliament on a platform advocating the state endowment of mothers, but his career is wrecked by his love affair with a brilliant young Oxford graduate, Isabel Rivers.

A story of our planet and humankind. From the origins of the earth to the founding of the League of Nations. Wells wrote this short version of "The Outline of History" to, in his own words "meet the needs of the busy general reader".

Dealing with political issues of the time the novel was written and concentrating specifically on feminist issues, through the course this novel the heroine matures from an innocent and na ve girl to a representative of the New Woman.

H. G. Wells, a prolific science fiction writer, also wrote many non-fiction works that may be found interesting and/or pertinent for our current times. Could world events be following a script? Volume 2 of this Trio contains: World Brain - Essays and addresses written during 1936-38. Wells vision of a new, free, synthetic, authoritative, permanent World Encyclopaedia that could help world citizens make the best use of universal information resources and make the best contribution to world peace. Socialism and the Family -Two papers written in 1906, detailing the attitude of Modem Socialism to family life. Washington, the Riddle/Hope of Peace -These Twenty-Nine essays were published throughout 1922 as Wells observations during his visit to Washington, DC. In spite of an awareness of possible world catastrophe that underlay much of his earlier writings and flared up again in old age, H. G. Wells was regarded as the chief literary spokesman of the liberal optimism that preceded World War I. No other writer has caught so vividly the energy of this period, its adventurousness, its feeling of release from the conventions of Victorian thought and propriety. Wells's influence was enormous, both on his own generation and on that which immediately followed it. None of his contemporaries did more to encourage revolt against Christian tenets and accepted codes of behaviour, especially as regards sex, in which, both in his books and in his personal life, he was a persistent advocate of an almost complete freedom. Though in many ways hasty, ill-tempered, and contradictory, Wells was undeviating and fearless in his efforts for social equality, world peace, and what he considered to be the future good of humanity.

The protagonist of The History of Mr. Polly is an antihero inspired by H. G. Wells' early experiences in the drapery trade: Alfred Polly, born circa 1870, a timid and directionless young man living in Edwardian England, who despite his own bumbling achieves contented serenity with little help from those around him. Mr. Polly's most striking characteristic is his "innate sense of epithet", which leads him to coin hilarious expressions like "the Shoveacious Cult" for "sunny young men of an abounding and elbowing energy" and "dejected angelosity" for the ornaments of Canterbury Cathedral. Alfred Polly lives in the imaginary town of Fishbourne in Kent (not to be confused with Fishbourne, West Sussex or Fishbourne, Isle of Wight - the town in the story is thought to be based on Sandgate, Kent where Wells lived for several years). The novel begins in medias res by presenting a miserable Mr. Polly: "He hated Foxbourne, he hated Foxbourne High Street, he hated his shop and his wife and his neighbours - every blessed neighbour - and with indescribable bitterness he hated himself". Thereafter, The History of Mr. Polly is divided in three parts. Chapters 1-6 depict his life up to age 20, when he marries his cousin Miriam Larkins and sets up an outfitter's shop in Fishbourne. Second Chapters 7-8 show Mr. Polly's spectacular suicide attempt, which ironically makes him a local hero, wins him insurance money that saves him from bankruptcy, and yields the insight that "Fishbourne wasn't the world", which leads him to abandon his shop and his wife. Chapters 9-10, at the Potwell Inn (apparently located in West Sussex), culminates in Mr. Polly's courageous victory over "Uncle Jim", a malicious relative of the innkeeper's granddaughter. An epilogue then depicts Mr. Polly at ease as assistant-innkeeper, after a brief visit to ascertain Miriam's prosperity.

The Purple Pileus, The Red Room, and Under the Knife is a collection of short stories by the famous author H. G. Wells. Herbert George Wells (21 September 1866 - 13 August 1946), usually referred to as H. G. Wells, was an English writer. He was prolific in many genres, including the novel, history, politics, social commentary, and textbooks and rules for war games. Wells is now best remembered for his science fiction novels and is called a "father of science fiction", along with Jules Verne and Hugo Gernsback. His most notable science fiction works include The Time Machine (1895), The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896), The Invisible Man (1897), and The War of the Worlds (1898). He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature four times. Wells's earliest specialized training was in biology, and his thinking on ethical matters took place in a specifically and fundamentally Darwinian context. He was also from an early date an outspoken socialist, often (but not always, as at the beginning of the First World War) sympathizing with pacifist views. His later works became increasingly political and didactic, and he wrote little science fiction, while he sometimes indicated on official documents that his profession was that of journalist. Novels like Kipps and The History of Mr Polly, which describe lower-middle-class life, led to the suggestion that he was a worthy successor to Charles Dickens, but Wells described a range of social strata and even attempted, in Tono-Bungay (1909), a diagnosis of English society as a whole. A diabetic, in 1934, Wells co-founded the charity The Diabetic Association (known today as Diabetes UK). Odin's Library Classics is dedicated to bringing the world the best of humankind's literature from throughout the ages. Carefully selected, each work is unabridged from classic works of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, or drama.

Tono-Bungay is narrated by George Ponderevo, who is persuaded to help develop the business of selling Tono-Bungay, a patent medicine created by his ambitious uncle Edward. George devotes seven years to organising the production and manufacture of a product which he believes to be "a damned swindle". He then quits day-to-day involvement with the enterprise in favour of aeronautics. But he remains associated with his uncle Edward, who becomes a financier of the first order and is on the verge of achieving social as well as economic dominance when his business empire collapses. George tries to rescue his uncle's failing finances by stealing quantities of a radioactive compound called "quap" from an island off the coast of West Africa