H.G. Wells was an English writer, born in 1866 and died in 1946, who worked in many genres but is chiefly remembered for his early science fiction. He produced more than forty novels, dozens of short stories and much history, politics and social commentary, and he was nominated four times for the Nobel Prize in Literature.
His first novel, The Time Machine (1895), was quickly followed by The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896), The War of the Worlds and The Invisible Man. He also wrote the dystopian When the Sleeper Wakes, later reworked as The Sleeper Awakes, and The War in the Air. In a different vein, Kipps (1905) drew on his own miserable years as a draper's apprentice, and Tono-Bungay (1909) set out to diagnose English society as a whole. In the Days of the Comet (1906) imagined comet gases making people behave rationally, while The World Set Free (1914) gave the first description of what he called atomic bombs.
Born in Bromley, Kent, Wells won a scholarship to study biology under Thomas Henry Huxley. His later bestseller The Outline of History (1920) made him rich. He died at his London home aged 79.
