by H. G. Wells
—July 13, 1895
THE SPECTATOR
The central notion of Mr. H. G. Wells’s grotesque romance, as he has frankly admitted, has been utilised by Mr. Gilbert in one of the Bab Ballads, being that of a man endowed with invisibility but susceptible to heat and cold, and therefore obliged to wear clothes. But while Mr. Gilbert treated the theme in a spirit of fantastic farce, Mr. Wells has worked it out with that sombre humour and remorseless logic which stamp him as a disciple, conscious or unconscious, of the author of Gulliver. Swift, however, excelled in the logical conduct to its extreme consequences of some absurd proposition; Mr. Wells’s method is in its essentials much more realistic. He does not posit his invisible man; he tells us how he became invisible as the result of a discovery in physiology based upon actual scientific data, for Mr. Wells is no dabbler but deeply versed in these studies. It is characteristic, again, of his method that his invisible man should be neither a buffoon nor a humourist, but a moody, irritable egotist, with a violent and vindictive temper. Griffin, in short, is really a tragic figure. His dreams of unlimited power are rudely dispelled by experience of the terrible practical drawbacks of his position, his desperate efforts to live in rustic seclusion are baffled by the curiosity of the villagers, and the exigencies of his position gradually accentuate his natural unkindliness until it develops into sheer inhumanity. Theft is followed by murder, the whole countryside is raised against him, and after he has found an asylum for a while in the house of a doctor, a fellow-student, to whom he confides the whole story of his discovery and its futility, the doctor’s suspicions are aroused, information is given to the authorities, and the invisible man takes flight, with the sole desire of revenging himself on his friend. The last scenes of all, in which the invisible man, now inflamed with homicidal mania, besieges the doctor’s house, and is finally hunted down and battered to death by the mob, are as vivid and gruesome as anything that Mr. Wells has done. As, however, he is so strong in realistic detail, we may be allowed to ask whether it is not the case that his invisible man, as an albino, would have been handicapped by short sight. To sum up, The Invisible Man is an amazingly clever performance, of engrossing interest throughout; we should call it fascinating were it not that the element of geniality, which lent unexpected charm to The Wheels of Chance, is here conspicuously absent.
—September 25, 1897
ARNOLD BENNETT
Like most of Mr. H. G. Wells’s novels and stories, [The Invisible Man] is based upon an Idea—the Idea that a man by a scientific process can make himself invisible. The Idea is not a new one—I think I have met with it several times before—but it is worked with an ingenuity, a realism, an inevitableness, which no previous worker in the field of “grotesque romance,” has ever approached, and which surpasses in some respects all Mr. Wells’s former efforts. The strength of Mr. Wells lies in the fact that he is not only a scientist, but a most talented student of character, especially quaint character. He will not only ingeniously describe for you a scientific miracle, but he will set down that miracle in the midst of a country village, sketching with excellent humour the inn-landlady, the blacksmith, the chemist’s apprentice, the doctor, and all the other persons whom the miracle affects. He attacks you before and behind, and the result is that you are compelled to yield absolutely to his weird spells.
The Invisible Man thought he was going to do great things when he devisualised himself (he did, in fact, terrorise a whole district), but he soon found his sad error, and his story is one of failure, growing more pathetic and grimmer as it proceeds; the last few pages are deep tragedy, grotesque but genuine. The theme is developed in a masterly manner. The history of the man’s first hunt in London for clothes and a mask wherewith to hide his invisibility, is a farce dreadful in its significance, but this is nothing to the naked, desperate tragedy of his last struggle against visible mankind. Indeed, the latter half of this book is pure sorrow. The invisible man is no longer grotesque, but human. One completely loses sight of the merely wonderful aspect of the phenomena in watching the dire pathos of his loneliness in a peopled world. Mr. Wells has achieved poetry.
—from Woman (September 29, 1897)
HENRY JAMES
It was very graceful of you to send me your book—I mean the particular masterpiece entitled The Time Machine, after I had so ungracefully sought it at your hands. My proper punishment would have been promptly to have to pay for it—and this atonement I should certainly, for my indiscretion, already have made, had this muddy village facilitated the transaction by placing a bookseller’s shop, or stand, in my path. (No Time Machine, as it happens, would suffice to measure the abysmal ages required by the local stationer to get a volume, as he calls it, down. Several, artlessly ordered by me, have been on their way down for months.) So I have had, as the next best thing, to bow my head to the extremity of simply reading you. You are very magnificent. I am beastly critical—but you are in a still higher degree wonderful. I re-write you, much, as I read—which is the highest tribute my damned impertinence can pay an author. I shall now not rest content till I have made up several other deficiencies—grossly accidental—in my perfect acquaintance with you. (Stay your hand—the aids to that extension are precisely the volumes on their way down. You shall cost me something—if it takes all my future—and all your own past.) So I am very particularly and knowingly grateful.
—from a letter to H. G. Wells (January 29, 1900)
Questions
1. The Spectator points out that in Wells’s view there is a connection between the advancement of technology and a secularization of society Is this dual process inevitable? Is it irreversible?
2. What is it we respond to in literary works based on a conception of the world that is contrary to fact, if not impossible? Think of Gulliver’s Travels or Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland or Frankenstein or The Invisible Man. Think of video games.
3. In many works of science fiction—Frankenstein is one of the best examples—attempts by scientists to improve on nature end in disaster. Some readers will undoubtedly argue that Griffin’s experiment was bound to fail from the beginning. What is the source of this recurrent motif? Conservatism? A sense that the fantasy of invisibility or tremendous power or time travel is itself immoral or worse?
4. Do you agree with the assessment that Wells’s characters lack depth, that he is an indifferent psychologist?
For Further Reading
Biographies
Coren, Michael. The Invisible Man: The Life and Liberties of H. G. Wells. New York: Atheneum, 1993.
Foot, Michael. The History of Mr. Wells. London: Doubleday, 1995.
MacKenzie, Norman, and Jeanne MacKenzie. H. G. Wells: a Biography. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1973.
West, Anthony. H. G. Wells: Aspects of a Life. New York: Random House, 1984.
Criticism
Borges, Jorge Luis. “The First Wells.” In Borges, a Reader: A Selection from the Writings of Jorge Luis Borges, edited by Emir Rodriguez Monegal and Alastair Reid. New York: Dutton, 1981.
Scheick, William J., ed. The Critical Response to H. G. Wells. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1995.
Suvin, Darko, and Robert M. Philmus, eds. H. G. Wells and Modern Science Fiction. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 1977.
Selected Editions of the Works of H. G. Wells
Wells, H. G. The Complete Science Fiction Treasury of H. G. Wells. With a preface by the author. Originally published as Seven Famous Novels, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1934. Reprint: New York: Avenel Books, 1978.
. The Invisible Man: A Grotesque Romance: A Critical Text of the 1897 New York First Edition, with an Introduction and Appendices. Edited by Leon Stover. Jefferson, NC: McFarland,1998.
____. The Time Machine: An Invention: A Critical Text of the 1895 London First Edition, with an Introduction and Appendices. Edited by Leon Stover. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1996.
————. The Time Machine. With a preface by the Author written for this edition; and
designs by W. A. Dwiggins. New York: Random House, 1931.
a
Difficult, obscure.
b
The incandescent lights are not electric but gas; there is no electricity in the Time Traveller’s house. The lilies of silver are a lily pattern in the silverware.
c
Fertility of mind.
d
Outburst.
e
Things or people chronologically out of place.
f
Cheap magic trick of the sort practiced by conjurers, or entertainer-magicians.
g
The model will travel time forever.
h
Upset.
i
Drafty; there is no central heat in the Time Traveller’s house.
j
Capriciousness or eccentricity.
k
Delicate china.
l
German university town.
m
One swallow.
n
Put on evening dress, a tuxedo, for dinner.
o
The Journalist says the Time Traveller has made himself up to look like a vagrant asking for handouts.
p
A crossing is a contrivance thieves use to make their victims stop or detour. In the Bible, the Book of Daniel, Nebuchadnezzar was a king God punished by making him walk on all fours and eat grass.
q
Facetious remark.
r
A racehorse, winner of the 1894 Derby.
s
Protein.
t
The Editor will pay a shilling (one twentieth of a pound or 12 pence) for a firsthand account—a goodly sum.
u
To summon the servants.
v
Bicycle seat.
w
Roller coaster.
x
The two times (June 22 and December 22) when the ecliptic, the apparent path of the earth’s orbit as seen from the sun, is farthest from the celestial equator.
y
A luminous substance.
z
Helter-skelter.
aa
Green, rust-like film that forms on bronze.
ab
Recklessness.
ac
Walkways.
ad
Boots or sandals that lace up to the knee.
ae
Suffering with tuberculosis; flushed red with fever.
af
The Eloi’s hands seem boneless, like the tentacles of an octopus.
ag
Pins used in a bowling game.
ah
Decorated Decorated with interlaced patterns.
ai
Ancient trading people of the Mediterranean who invented the alphabet; they would seem superior to the Eloi.
aj
Excessively large.
ak
Fruit-eating.
al
Ancient reptile that lived in the sea.
am
The names of things.
an
The Time Traveller’s machine says the year is 802,701 A.D.
ao
Face.
ap
Mythical animals, half eagle, half lion.
aq
Improving, bettering.
ar
Vexed, annoyed.
as
More than a half moon, but not completely full.
at
A Morlock, the subterranean creatures who share the planet with the Eloi; there are no wild animals in the future.
au
Impassive, expressionless.
av
Western, or European; he associates contemplation with the East, or the Orient.
aw
Obsession.
ax
Sewage pipes, telegraph keys, and trains.
ay
Money orders.
az
Shelter.
ba
A sea-anemone is a sea creature that resembles a flower; it has a cylindrical body at the top of which is a central mouth surrounded by tentacles (palps).
bb
Three.
bc
Ventilation chimneys with heat waves shimmering above them.
bd
Primitive primate found only on Madagascar.
be
Nevertheless.
bf
Blind, albino carp in Mammoth Cave.
bg
The owners of industry inhabit the surface; the industrial workers live underground.
bh
The London subway.
bi
London slum-dweller.
bj
Unpaid rent.
bk
Feeble, sickly paleness.
bl
The Time Traveller feels closer to the Eloi because they are more human.
bm
Indirect, roundabout route.
bn
Wall.
bo
Fishes that live at great depths or fishes living in caves.
bp
Foul odor.
bq
Wooden matches that can be struck on any hard surface.
br
Unconscious.
bs
Those who ran their machines.
bt
The merely decorative kings who followed Charlemagne in France during the Dark Ages (the ninth and tenth centuries).
bu
By consent of the Morlocks.
bv
Easily climbed.
bw
Spire.
bx
Growing dark.
by
Plants with white or yellow flowers in clusters.
bz
Tree trunks.
ca
The Dog Star, the brightest star in the sky.
cb
According to Isaac Newton, every 25,000 years, as the earth turns on its polar axis, the axis itself rotates.
cc
Grassy, raised flatland.
cd
Mere.
ce
Sections of the double door.
cf
Splayed out.
cg
Home of London’s Museum of Natural History.
ch
Compared to the dull present in which he finds himself.
ci
Sulphur, saltpeter, and nitrates are chemicals necessary for making gunpowder.
cj
Dissolved or melted.
ck
Clear evolutionary changes.
cl
It may be, of course, that the floor did not slope, but that the museum was built into the side of a hill.—Ed.4
cm
Garden outside a basement window.
cn
Signal tower.
co
Warped bindings.
cp
Journal of the Royal Society, founded in 1660; until the nineteenth century, scientists were “natural philosophers.”
cq
Scottish song title that translates as The Land of the Dead. The Time Traveller may think of the future as a land of the dead or may simply be elated—if the land of the dead is paradise—that he has found some matches. His dancing combines popular and folk styles.
cr
Camphor is a flammable substance, derived from the camphor tree, that is often used in liniments. Paraffin is a waxy substance that is also flammable.
cs
Cuttlefish.
ct
The Time Traveller cannot resist the temptation to deface a steatite (soapstone) deity, probably as a way of mocking religion.
cu
Soft coal.
cv
The iron bar becomes a medieval club.
cw
Wave.
cx
Recognize.
cy
Garnets; dark-red semiprecious stones.
&n
bsp; cz
Drowsy.
da
Small hill or mound used as a burial site.
db
Domes.
dc
Ghostly pale.
dd
Protuberances, studs.
de
Segmented mouth area of an arthropod.
df
Without a ray of light.
dg
Sandbar.
dh
Soccer ball.
di
The narrator; the Time Traveller sees him on his way back, but what he is actually seeing is the moment when he departs on his second journey.
dj
London newspaper to which Wells contributed articles.
dk
The pistils or female parts.
dl
Make that appointment.
dm
Random.