Edwardian Wells

The years 1895–1910 are the years in which Wells established himself. The brilliant young innovator who burst on to the literary scene with The Time Machine was a world figure by the end of the Edwardian decade. But by this date – 1910 – he was also under attack and less sure of his direction. In 1895, when he was thirty, Wells had been quite clear about where he was going. He was going up: his drive was to burst the social and literary barriers, to establish himself in a position of unassailable financial and social advantage. By the age of forty-five he had secured that position; where was he to go next? In the intervening years his need to disentangle himself from constricting situations and impose his will on others had led to his agreement with Jane that they would have an ‘open’ marriage, to his vain attempt to dominate the Fabian movement and to his self-appointment as apostle of freedom to the nation. In 1910 the problem for Wells was that temperamentally he still had to conquer: but to conquer what?

Writing in the 1930s about his second marriage Wells characterised himself as a fighter, and the marriage as his and his wife's ‘joint attack upon the world’. He and Jane were sexually incompatible but, as he says, at that early stage of their struggle for ‘position and worldly freedom’ they were allies rather than lovers (Autobiography, pp. 465, 464).