Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Select Conversations with an Uncle (Now Extinct) and Two Other Reminiscences | - | H.G. Wells | Buy |
| 2 | The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents | - | H.G. Wells | Buy |
| 3 | The Crystal Egg and Other Tales | - | H.G. Wells | Buy |
| 4 | Thirty Strange Stories | - | H.G. Wells | Buy |
| 5 | The Plattner Story and Others | - | H.G. Wells | Buy |
| 6 | Tales of Space and Time | - | H.G. Wells | Buy |
| 7 | Twelve Stories and a Dream | 1906 | H.G. Wells | Buy |
| 8 | The Country of the Blind and Other Selected Stories | 1909 | H.G. Wells | Buy |
| 9 | Tales of Wonder | 1910 | H.G. Wells | Buy |
| 10 | Selected Stories of H.G. Wells | 1927 | H.G. Wells | Buy |
| 11 | The Complete Short Stories | 1927 | H.G. Wells | Buy |
| 12 | The Moth and Other Stories | 1962 | H.G. Wells | Buy |
| 13 | Early Writings in Science and Science Fiction | 1975 | H.G. Wells | Buy |
| 14 | The Empire of the Ants and Other Stories | 1977 | H.G. Wells | Buy |
| 15 | The Collector’s Book of Science Fiction | 1978 | H.G. Wells | Buy |
| 16 | The Man With a Nose | 1984 | H.G. Wells | Buy |
| 17 | In the Days of the Comet & Seventeen Short Stories | 1999 | H.G. Wells | Buy |
| 18 | The Red Room and Other Stories | 2000 | H.G. Wells | Buy |
| 19 | The Grisly Folk, and the Wild Asses of the Devil | 2008 | H.G. Wells | Buy |
| 20 | Collected Short Stories | 2008 | H.G. Wells | Buy |
| 21 | Tales of the Weird and Supernatural | 2011 | H.G. Wells | Buy |
| 22 | The Best Short Stories of H.G. Wells | 2015 | H.G. Wells | Buy |
| 23 | The Argonauts of the Air & 15 Short Stories | 2015 | H.G. Wells | Buy |
| 24 | The Door in the Wall? And Other Stories | 2017 | H.G. Wells | Buy |
H.G. Wells published short story collections throughout his career, beginning with Select Conversations with an Uncle in the 1890s and The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents shortly after. These early collections established his reputation as a writer who could pack a novel’s worth of imagination into a few pages.
The collections span more than a century of publishing, since editors have continued to assemble and repackage Wells’s stories long after his death in 1946. Some volumes, like Thirty Strange Stories and The Complete Short Stories, attempt to be comprehensive. Others, like Tales of the Weird and Supernatural or The Red Room and Other Stories, are themed selections aimed at readers with specific tastes.
Wells himself selected and arranged several of these collections during his lifetime. The Country of the Blind and Other Selected Stories (1909) and Tales of Wonder (1910) reflect his own sense of which stories were his strongest. Later editions compiled by other editors often overlap, so readers should check the contents before buying multiple volumes.