Books

First edition in book form, first issue, including the author's clipped signature and a letter to film producer Isidore Ostrer, both mounted on the front endpapers, and various newspaper articles contemporary to the infamous 1938 broadcast, pasted to the preliminaries and final blanks. Together, this material offers a time capsule of the immediate aftermath of the apparent news that Martians were besieging the planet. Wells's letter is dated 14 October 1936 and reads, "To Isidore Ostrer, The Experiment in Descriptive Economics (with special reference to Chapter the Ninth)"; it is mounted to the front pastedown, facing Wells's clipped signature from the letter on the front free endpaper underneath his photographic portrait. The financier Isidore Ostrer (1889-1975) owned the film studio Gaumont-British Picture Corporation Limited, which had produced the 1919 film adaptation of Wells's novel The First Men in the Moon (1901) prior to Ostrer's acquisition of the company in 1927. The studio was Britain's largest during the 1930s. In the letter, Wells refers to Ostrer's interest in economics, a subject Ostrer wrote about in works such as The Conquest of Gold (1932). Ostrer had also owned the sports newspaper Sunday Referee. The pasted newspaper cuttings are mostly dated 1 November 1938 - a mere two days after Orson Welles's radio drama adaptation aired. Samples from the Daily Herald and The Daily Telegraph Morning Post give headings such as "Terror from Coast to Coast", "Monsters", and "Believed It", while the Times reports that "America today hardly knows whether to laugh or to be angry. Here is a nation which, alone of big nations, has deemed it unnecessary to rehearse for protection against attack from the air by fellow-beings on this earth and suddenly believes itself... faced with a more fearful attack from another world". The article "US Invaded by 'Martians'" fights back against the view that the broadcast was too incredulous to be believed, noting that "the result was a panic unprecedented in the history of broadcasting. Hundreds of motorists scoured the countryside looking for the 'meteorite'. Others packed their belongs and evacuated the towns for places of 'safety'". A single set of the newspaper cuttings pre-dates the broadcast and advertises the fireworks "adaptation" of The War of The Worlds held at Crystal Palace on 6 August 1931. The story of The War of The Worlds was suggested by the author's brother, Frank. The two men were walking "through some particularly peaceful Surrey scenery" when Frank remarked, "suppose some beings from another planet were to drop out of the sky suddenly". The novel is dedicated to Frank with the comment "this rendering of his idea". This is a first issue copy, the 16-page publisher's catalogue "Mr. William Heinemann's Autumn Announcements" dated 1897 and headed by New Letters of Napoleon I on the second page. The novel was serialized simultaneously in Pearson's magazine in Great Britain and Cosmopolitan magazine in the US from April to December 1897. Octavo. Original grey cloth, spine and front cover lettered in black, publisher's monogram to rear cover in black, edges untrimmed. Toning and small stain to spine, partial splits to inner hinges, offsetting from newspaper cuttings pasted to prelims and endmatter, very occasional foxing to contents. A very good copy. Currey, pp. 526-7; Hammond B5; Wells 14.

The War of the Worlds is a science fiction novel by English author H.G. Wells. It first appeared in serialized form in 1897, published by Pearson’s Magazine in the UK and by Cosmopolitan magazine in the US. The novel details the experiences of an unnamed protagonist in London and his brother in Surrey during an invasion of Earth by Martians. It is a pioneering work of the science fiction genre, popularizing the alien invasion trope.