H.G. Wells at English Institute: A report by the Editor

15. of a study of Wells' indebtedness to Poe.) There is also the problem of Wells' influence on and relationship to the science fiction being written today. 2. Wells' greatest achievement as a novelist is the succession of lower middle class novels—KIPPS, ΤΟΕ Ο-BUNGAY, and THE HISTORY OF MR. POLLY—which deserve some consideration as a group. Their distinguishing virtue, their humor, is customarily labelled Dickensian, and left at that. This is the course followed by E.M. Forster in ASPECTS OF THE NOVEL. Unquestionably Viells does resemble Dickens , but his humorous characters and situations possess a distinctly Wellsian quality, too, I would submit that no attempt to define this quality can afford to overlook the curious, and, I feel, significant resemblance between the characters in Wells' lower middle class novels and in his best science fiction. Mr. Polly, Dr. Moreau, Teddy Ponderevo, the Time Traveller, Kipps,-and the Invisible Man all possess a bumptious impatience with things as they are, an ungovernable urge to break out. These qualities are exploited for comic effects in the novels and fantastic incongruity in the science fiction. In the past twenty years H.G. Wells has slowly but steadily declined in importance both as a novelist and as a publicist. No one denies this. And probably no responsible literary historian could be persuaded to work toward a reversal of this process in the hope of whooping up a Wells revival such as those enjoyed by James or Melville. But those of us who take particular interest in English fiction in the transitional period of 1880 to 1920 should heartily welcome any efforts directed toward producing a more balanced estimate of the value and significance of one of the major writers of this period. H.G. ViELLS AT ENGLISH INSTITUTE A report by the Editor In opening the discussions of Conference II, "The Edwardians: A Reappraisal," Professor Gordon N. Ray read a paper on "H.G. Wells Tries To Be a Novelist." For me, at least, Mr. Ray's paper contained a psychic element. In the "Editor's Fence" section of EFT, II, 2, Part I, I raised a number of questions about Wells with which I hoped to-focus attention on Wells the artist rather than on Wells the journalist, polemicist, or the man who is remembered chiefly for his renunciation of fiction as an art. The early and most significant portion of Mr. Ray's paper anticipated the publication of my questions. Mr. Ray showed that from 1895 to about 1910 Wells was, in fact, "trying to write a novel," the latter word being understood in the general sense in which any serious writer of fiction as such understands the term. According to Mr. Ray, Wells succeeded in producing at least four artistically respectable novels during this period and he also developed a theory for the serious kind of novel he was writing . His theory of fiction between 1895 and 1910 is chiefly expounded in anonymous SATURDAY REVIEVi articles identified as Viells' by Mr. Ray on the basis of evidence in the Wells papers at Illinois. During this period Viells denounced popular potboilers and most "romances" and held up as touchstones of excellence such novelists as Balzac, Gissing, Hardy (JUDE), Turgenev, and others. He emphasizes the- careful motivation of characters , the employment of a significant social force, the careful construction of a-book. Realism, not in the sense of the naturalists' practice or even Gissing's, but in the sense of life seen whole, both in its tragic and in its comic aspect, was his keynote. After I9IO, Mr. Ray concluded, Wells turned away from this araist's view of the novel. With ANN VERONICA he had made enemies, concerted efforts were made to suppress his books, and Wells increasingly resorted to polemics against his critics and . the element in the social and intellectual life of the time they stood for. This, Mr. Ray suggested, is one of many reasons why Wells turned his back on the novel as a work of art. Interestingly, Mrs. Kirk, the Howelis scholar, commented from the floor that William Dean Howelis had been expounding similar views of the novel before 1895. No evidence was introduced, however...