The Popular Wells, the Classic Wells

Abstract

In H. G. Wells, two forces were struggling for predominance, the desire to please as a scientific romancer and a short story writer, and as even a mainstream novelist; and the desire to have his message heard and acted upon; the desire to maintain his great appeal as mainly a science fiction writer and his sense of responsibility to effect a real change of the world, to reform and to create a world state. Perhaps it is true that he was not gifted enough to write great mainstream novels, and so he was denied a place among the greatest masters of this genre, masters like his three friends Bennett, James and Conrad; but it is perhaps more certain that his urge to reform and put the world right, which was so insistent in his consciousness, and was present more and more as he grew older, was making his writing more and more didactic and heavy-handed, and consequently more and more unpopular. He was at his best when the educationist in him worked in unison with the imaginative artist, and that was true of his early science fiction. Wells is not alone in working under two or more opposed forces, although this was most detrimental in his case. A writer may occasionally decide to relax his/her rigorous watch over the quality of his/her product, and stoop to write some sensational though aesthetically superficial stories. This happened to Joseph Conrad, for instance, and so it happened to James; but that was rare in the case of these two writers. But in the case of Wells, though he was never careless about his art, the other preoccupations, as his role as a man with a message, were definitely having their toll on his art; 'message' often had the upper hand, and the 'aesthetic' aspect receded proportionately. Even so, he has left enough valuable work that it is quite possible that he may regain the distinguished place that he had enjoyed between 1895 and 1910.