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The Time Machine
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The Time Machine Paperback - 2005

by H. G. Wells; Introduction by Marina Warner; Notes by Steve MacLean

The first and greatest portrayal of time travel is printed with a newly established text, a full biographical essay on Wells, a list of further reading, and detailed notes.


Summary

When a Victorian scientist propels himself into the year a.d. 802,701, he is initially delighted to find that suffering has been replaced by beauty, contentment, and peace. Entranced at first by the Eloi, an elfin species descended from man, he soon realizes that these beautiful people are simply remnants of a once-great culture—now weak and childishly afraid of the dark. They have every reason to be afraid: in deep tunnels beneath their paradise lurks another race descended from humanity—the sinister Morlocks. And when the scientist’s time machine vanishes, it becomes clear he must search these tunnels if he is ever to return to his own era.

  • Includes a newly established text, a full biographical essay on Wells, a list of further reading, and detailed notes
  • Marina Warner’s introduction considers Wells’s development of the “scientific romance” and places the novel in the context of its time

 

From the publisher

Herbert George Wells was born in Bromley, Kent, England, on September 21, 1866. His father was a professional cricketer and sometime shopkeeper, his mother a former lady’s maid. Although "Bertie" left school at fourteen to become a draper’s apprentice (a life he detested), he later won a scholarship to the Normal School of Science in London, where he studied with the famous Thomas Henry Huxley. He began to sell articles and short stories regularly in 1893. In 1895, his immediately successful novel rescued him from a life of penury on a schoolteacher’s salary. His other "scientific romances"—The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896), The Invisible Man (1897), The War of the Worlds (1898), The First Men in the Moon (1901), and The War in the Air (1908)—won him distinction as the father of science fiction.

Henry James saw in Wells the most gifted writer of the age, but Wells, having coined the phrase "the war that will end war" to describe World War I, became increasingly disillusioned and focused his attention on educating mankind with his bestselling Outline of History (1920) and his later utopian works. Living until 1946, Wells witnessed a world more terrible than any of his imaginative visions, and he bitterly observed: "Reality has taken a leaf from my book and set itself to supercede me."


Marina Warner is a prize-winning writer of fiction, criticism, and history.

Details

  • Title The Time Machine
  • Author H. G. Wells; Introduction by Marina Warner; Notes by Steve MacLean
  • Binding Paperback
  • Edition Reprint
  • Pages 128
  • Volumes 1
  • Language ENG
  • Publisher Penguin Group, London
  • Date 2005-05-31
  • Features Bibliography
  • ISBN 9780141439976 / 0141439971
  • Weight 0.26 lbs (0.12 kg)
  • Dimensions 7.76 x 5.14 x 0.38 in (19.71 x 13.06 x 0.97 cm)
  • Ages 18 to UP years
  • Grade levels 13 - UP
  • Themes
    • Aspects (Academic): UK Unique
  • Library of Congress subjects Time travel
  • Library of Congress Catalog Number 2005276145
  • Dewey Decimal Code FIC

Media reviews

Citations

  • Ingram Advance, 05/01/2005, Page 113

About the author

H.G. Wells was a professional writer and journalist, who published more than a hundred books, including novels, histories, essays and programmes for world regeneration. Wells's prophetic imagination was first displayed in pioneering works of science fiction, but later he became an apostle of socialism, science and progress. His controversial views on sexual equality and the shape of a truly developed nation remain directly relevant to our world today. He was, in Bertrand Russell's words, 'an important liberator of thought and action'.

Marina Warner is a famed writer and critic. Patrick Parrinder has written on H.G. Wells, science fiction, James Joyce and the history of the English novel. Since 1986 he has been Professor of English at the University of Reading.

Steven McLean is Secretary of the H.G. Wells Society. He recently completed his PhD on H.G. Wells at the University of Sheffield.

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The Time Machine (Penguin Classics)

by H.G. Wells; Editor-Steve McLean; Editor-Patrick Parrinder; Introduction-Marina Warner

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The Time Machine (Penguin Classics)

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