A Survey of Wells

Book Reviews her dying man and to see to her hens." Or of Ford: "He could have been a great 'realist' novelist if he had been colder towards his own emotions." On the other hand Judd does have a gift for producing an appropriate (if sometimes too long) quotation to illustrate a point more convincingly than he can make it himself; an instance is his quotation from Ford's Joseph Conrad, which vividly shows what Ford and Conrad thought they were trying to do. It is in large part this gift for finding telling passages that keeps the biography afloat until the man of Judd's vision arrives with the Great War. Judd's version of Ford is an engaging presence when distilled from the 450 pages that constitute it; but it is also attended by a slight nausea. Judd refuses to countenance any serious criticism of Ford, and whether in biographical terms he is right or wrong (and in the end that is a matter to be decided by the individual reader's own understanding of Ford), he is quite certainly wrong in creative terms. Despite the length of the book, the wealth of circumstantial detail, the final effect is more that of pulp romance than biography—of fairy-tale even. Too much sugar makes you fat, and even when Judd is forced by events to be critical of Ford, his response is: "It is difficult not to feel that he was a bit of an old rogue on this occasion." In the end it seems appropriate that the book is printed on thick but somehow flabby paper, that is itself slightly nauseating to the touch. Simon Gatrell University of Georgia A Survey of Wells Brian Murray. H G. Wells. New York: Continuum, 1990. 190 pp. $18.95 IT HAS BEEN twenty-five years since the centennial of the birth of H. G. Well, and it will be four years until the centennial of the publication of his first science fiction novel, The Time Machine. The amount of material written about Wells in the years since 1895 is staggering, as those of us who have read most of it can attest. One might ask if another book is even necessary. If that book is as well written, as clear and concise as Brian Murray's survey, the answer for the reader who wishes a quick answer to the question of who was this Wells, anyway, the answer has to be in the affirmative. In less than 200 pages, Murray covers Wells's life and 463 ELT: VOLUME 34:4, 1991 essential works, weaving the facts of that life and the man's ideas together to produce a clear portrait of the man and his influence on his own generation and the legacy he left for ours. The life (1866-1946) covers fully half the book, followed by chapters on the science fiction (or scientific romances, as Wells called them), the Edwardian novels, his relationship with women, the later novels, and a survey and assessment of his reputation, with some hints and predictions of "things to come." The chapter on the life is an overview that skillfully combines the personal facts with an account of the development of Wells's ideas. For no other writer is the concept that his life can be read in his ideas so applicable. We are told some minor traits, like what Wells's voice was like (Truman Capote imitating John Houseman); still, that small touch adds humanity to the portrait. The son of a lower middle-class merchant, Wells spoke of his early life as though it rivaled Charles Dickens's days in the blacking warehouse . Although Bernard Shaw suggested this was only an exaggeration, Wells depicts this type of character and milieu in so many of his works that it emphasizes how much he drew on his own life for situations and characters. Samuel Cowap, the pharmacist for whom Wells served an apprenticeship, was the original of Edward Ponderevo in Tono-Bungay. Wells of course used other aspects of his background. Winwood Reade's The Martyrdom of Man (1872) was read by many in the Victorian period. It had an influence on Arthur...