H.G. Wells books

Anthologies

Correspondence Of H.G. Wells Reading Order

Gothic Fantasy Reading Order

H.G. Wells Audiobooks Reading Order

MIT Press/Radium Age Reading Order

Non-Fiction

Screenplays

Short Stories/Novellas

Short Story Collections

Standalone Novels

Herbert George Wells was born in Bromley, Kent, in 1866. He studied biology under T.H. Huxley at the Normal School of Science (now Imperial College London), and that scientific training shaped everything he wrote. Between 1895 and 1901, he published the novels that made his reputation: The Time Machine, The Island of Dr. Moreau, The Invisible Man, The War of the Worlds, and The First Men in the Moon. These books did not just tell adventure stories. They asked hard questions about evolution, class, colonialism, and what science might do to human beings.

Wells was also a prolific writer of realistic fiction, non-fiction, and social commentary. Novels like Kipps and The History of Mr Polly drew on his own lower-middle-class upbringing, while works like The Outline of History and A Short History of the World attempted to make world history accessible to general readers. He wrote about politics, warfare, education, and the future of civilization with equal energy. His non-fiction output alone runs to dozens of volumes.

His short stories are some of the finest in the English language. “The Country of the Blind,” “The Door in the Wall,” and “The Star” have been anthologized countless times. Wells remained productive into his seventies, though his later novels are less widely read today. He died in 1946, having written more than a hundred books and shaped the way we think about the future.