H.G. Wells by Keith Ferrell

Author:Keith Ferrell
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781590773574
Publisher: M. Evans & Company

THIRTEENFIGHTING FABIAN

THROUGH ALL OF HIS work at global plans and prescriptions, Wells never forgot that he was a novelist. It was with fiction that he made his reputation, and fiction remained to him in many ways the most important of all his writings. He knew that works such as Anticipations had engaged his philosophical and argumentative nature in ways novels never could. But he also knew that his nonfiction did little for his artistic reputation and position. His nonfiction was lecture, pure exposition of ideas, in which form and style mattered less than content. Fiction demanded more: In a novel he must subordinate (or try to) his lectures to his story, he must concentrate on the creation of believable characters, he must pursue art rather than simply idea.

It was a great challenge and one Wells felt up to. He thought that he had it in him to create great novels, books that would capture their times, and also serve as literature that would outlive their author. Wells’s friend Henry James thought Wells had a great future as a novelist. He urged Wells to spend more time on his novels, to approach them as James himself might. James believed that the purpose of art was to give shape to life, not merely reproduce life. James labored over his novels, giving careful thought to every sentence, using his art to create a vision of life upon which the judgments and tastes of Henry James had been imposed.

While Wells was flattered to have the attention of the Master, as James was known, Wells already knew that the slow and painstaking creation of artistic masterpieces would not be his way. He had too much to say and was too eager to say it. Wells’s stories rushed out at great speed, and rather than spending time on them in search of aesthetic perfection, Wells would turn to his next project, his mind already two steps ahead of his pen.

Nevertheless he did pursue art, and in 1905 published a novel that had occupied him, on and off, for seven years. In fact, the book was begun on October 5, 1898, the same day he completed Love and Mr. Lewisham, the first of his “serious” novels. Wells recorded the event—birth of one book, conception of another—in one of his humorous “picshuas.” The novel begun that day came to be known as Kipps.

Kipps: The Story of a Simple Soul, to give its full title, is a novel whose roots lie deep in Wells’s own life. Artie Kipps is a young man whose journey through life takes him to schools similar to those Wells attended, and who is apprenticed to a draper at an early age. Like his creator, Artie Kipps sought a means of overcoming the circumstances of his life and rising above them.

Wells gave the story a great deal of attention, repeatedly working his way through passages during the seven-year gestation of the book. Published within a few months of A Modern Utopia, Kipps made clear to the public that Wells was a writer of range and great talent.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.