Books

THE FIRST SCIENTIFIC ROMANCE BY H. G. WELLS WELLS, H. G. The Time Machine London: William Heinemann, 1895 Small 8vo., original tan cloth, lettered in purple to upper board and along backstrip, with central device of a sphinx to the front board; publisher s device to lower left hand corner of rear board; outer edges untrimmed; pp. [viii], 151, [i], [xvi, publisher s ads]; the text itself, aside from the odd spot and finger mark, near-fine, unmarked and with many pages totally unopened; both endpapers with tape mark residue; the boards a little grubby, bumped at corners and darkened along the backstrip, with some scuffing and fraying to spine ends and a couple of small ink splashes; evidence of a sticker being removed from the front board, leaving a lighter patch beneath. Provenance: Book plates of the English actor and director F[rank] Wyndham Goldie and R. Barnwell to the front paste-down and endpaper, respectively. First UK edition, first issue, including the undated 16-page publisher s catalogue to the rear of the text beginning with The Manxman by Hall Caine. This edition was preceded by the American Holt edition, with significant textual differences and inaccuracies. It was 1888 when Wells first conceived of the concept of time travel within a fictional setting, when his novella The Chronic Argonauts was serialised from April to June in the Royal College of Science student magazine The Science Schools Journal. Furthermore, Wells was not the first novelist to have considered the idea. Edward Page Mitchell's 1881 story The Clock that Went Backward also features a mechanical time-travelling device, and is the first known use of the concept of a temporal paradox. Furthermore, Enrique Gaspar s El anacron�pete (1887) also sees the invention of an electrical-powered cast iron box, built for the purpose of time travel. It was undoubtedly Wells debut work, however, which truly popularised the theme as a genre in itself. Later adapting his short story into a full-length version, the first edition appeared in book form in America, published by Henry Holt and Company on 7th May 1895. The British edition appeared just a few weeks later, but with substantial differences, and it is the text of the UK edition which has remained the most popular today, with nearly all modern reprints reproducing the latter - it has even been suggested that the Holt and the Heinemann editions were prepared from different manuscripts. The novel follows a character known only to the reader as The Time Traveller , as he ventures 800,000 years into the future using an elaborate ivory, crystal and brass device. There he meets two races of peoples: the ethereal Eloi and the subterranean Morlocks who not only symbolise the duality of human nature, but offer a terrifying portrait of the future of the human race. Reflective of Wells s own political and socialist views, it portrays a future in which money has become irrelevant, as well as warning against the dangers of a capitalist society. It is also said that the idea of underground living was inspired by his own upbringing; growing up predominantly in a basement kitchen, with his mother working as a housekeeper in a house with underground tunnels. As well as being one of the first books to deal specifically with the concept of time travel, The Time Machine is also an early example of the dying earth subgenre. The pages which deal with the Time Traveller in a distant future (in which the sun is huge and red) places the book in the field of the study of eschatology, or that of the idea of end times. Wells wrote of his work that it had "lasted as long as the diamond-framed safety bicycle, which came in at about the date of its first publication", and that he was "assured it will outlive him". He was not wrong. The novel undoubtedly launched his successful career, and earned him the reputation of The Father of Science Fiction . Rare in this format.