The H.G. Wells Society

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Aims and Functions of the Society

The H.G. Wells Society was founded in 1960. It has an international membership, and aims to promote a widespread interest in the life, work and thought of Herbert George Wells (see "Statement of Objects"). It publishes an annual journal, The Wellsian, and issues a biannual newsletter. It has published a comprehensive bibliography of Wells's published works, and other publications, including a number of works by Wells which have been out of print for many years.

Here is a list of H.G. Wells works currently in print (updated through February 2005), an important note on Wells and Copyright, and a full bibliography.

The Society organises a weekend conference each year when aspects of Wells's life and work are discussed in a congenial atmosphere. Topics discussed in recent years have included

In addition, the Society has organised two major international conferences. The first, under the title, H.G. Wells under Revision, was held in 1986 to mark the 40th anniversary of Wells's death; the second, The Time Machine: Past, Present and Future was held in 1995 to mark the centenary of the publication of Wells's first scientific romance.

SUBSCRIPTIONS

The subscription rate is currently £18 a year (UK/EU) or £21 (rest of the world); couples, £21; institutional members, £22; retired, unwaged and full-time students, £12 (UK/EU) or £15 (rest of the world). For more information on joining the society, follow this subscription link.

Subscription and other society information is available through:
Paul Allen
1 Nackington Road
Canterbury
Kent
CT1 3NU
England
E-mail: Emelyne Godfrey juststruckone@hotmail.com

SOCIETY NEWS AND EVENTS

  • Click for Patrick Parrinder's review of the society's 2010 From Kent to Cosmopolis conference. It was held at the Darwin Conference Centre, University of Kent at Canterbury, July 9th - 11th, 2010.

  • We regret to announce the passing of noted Wells scholar and HGW Society V.P. David C. Smith on November 7th, 2009. His obituary appeared in the Bangor Daily News on November 10th and may be found online here. David Smith was perhaps best known in Wellsian circles for his definitive biography of Wells, Desperately Mortal, Yale University Press, 1988, but we in the H.G. Wells Society will miss him for even more, including his dedication to and encouragement of continued research on all aspects of the life, work and thought of H.G. Wells.

  • The first known Mongolian translation of The War of the Worlds is now available from the Mongolian National Association for Control of Infectious Diseases for $16 (US) per copy, including postage and packing. Discounts available for orders of five or more copies. Please contact the association president, Prof. P. Nymadawa at nymadawa@gmail.com for ordering information. The association's special edition includes illustrations and a parallel English translation of what appears to be the authoritative Atlantic edition of 1924.

  • Click for information on The Early Fiction of H.G. Wells: Fantasies of Science, by former HGW Society Secretary Steve McLean, offering a detailed and comprehensive study of the interconnections between Wells's scientific romances and the discourses of science in the 1890s and early years of the twentieth century. It has just been shortlisted for the British Society for Literature and Science's best book prize for 2009. Also still available is H.G. Wells Interdisciplinary Essays, a collection of mostly new essays from both established scholars and younger researchers and incorporates various aspects of Wells’s position as one of the most important writers of the late nineteenth century and early years of the twentieth century.

  • Click for information on H.G. Wells in Nature and H.G. Wells' Fin-de-Siecle, both edited by John Partington and published by Peter Lang AG.