'Emrys Daniel Hughes, [an] imprisoned CO and son of a Tonypandy miner, learned that the authorities were not unaware of the subversive potential of great literature. Following a Home Office directive to examine prisoners' books, the chaplain confiscated a volume of Shelley, though not before Hughes had a chance to read and discuss it. The padre also apparently removed Tristram Shandy from the prison library: Hughes found it whilst cleaning the chaplain's rookm and had read it on the sly... In More's Utopia he discovered a radical rethinking of criume and punishment. The World Set Free, in which HG Wells predicted the devastation of nuclear war, naturally spoke to his antiwar activism, and he was greatly impressed by the Quaker idealism in George Fox's journal, a biography of William Penn and Walt Whitman's poems.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Emrys Daniel Hughes Print: Book
'In 1898 Armstrong organised the Ashington Debating and Literary Improvement Society, and his reading broadened out to Shakespeare, Burns, Shelley, Keats, Tennyson, Byron, Whitman, Wordsworth, Scott, Robert Browning, Darwin and T.H. Huxley. Robertson Nicoll's British Weekly had introduced him to a more liberal Nonconformity that was hospitable to contemporary literature. The difficulty was that the traditional Nonconformist commitment to freedom of conscience was propelling him beyond the confines of Primitive Methodism, as far as Unitarianism, the Rationalist Press Association and the Independent Labour Party. His tastes in literature evolved apace: Ibsen, Zola. Meredith, and Wilde by the 1890s; then on to Shaw, Wells, and Bennett; and ultimately Marxist economics and Brave New World'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Chester Armstrong Print: Book
[A Sheffield Survey organised by Arnold Freeman in 1918, assessing 816 manual workers, gives the following case:] 'Engine tenter, age twenty-seven...Often attends operas...Methodically building up a personal library following the guidelines of Arnold Bennett's Literary Taste. Has read the Bible, Shakespeare (The Merchant of Venice, Julius Caesar, The Tempest, Much Ado about Nothing), Pope, Tennyson, Masefield, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Emerson, William Morris, most of Ruskin, Dickens (Nicholas Nickleby, David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, A Tale of Two Cities, The Old Curiosity Shop, A Christmas Carol), The Cloister and the Hearth, GK Chesterton, Bernard Shaw (Major Barbara, John Bull's Other Island, The Doctor's Dilemma, Man and Superman, The Shewing up of Blanco Posnet, The Devil's Disciple, You Never Can Tell, Socialism and Superior Brains, Fabian Essays, An Unsocial Socialist, The Irrational Knot), John Galsworthy, about a dozen books by H.G. Wells and perhaps twenty by Bennett, Sidney and Beatrice Webb's Industrial Democracy and other books on trade unionism, Sir Oliver Lodge, Edward Carpenter's Towards Democracy and The Intermediate Sex, J.A. Hobson and Alfred Marshall on Economics and Plato's Republic'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: questionaire respondent Print: Book
'Jude the Obscure, Edward Carpenter's Love's Coming of Age, Grant Allen's The Woman Who Did, H.G. Well's The New Machiavelli and Ann Veronica, as well as the examples of Mary Wollstonecraft and George Eliot all made Eva [Slawson] think furiously about free love.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Eva Slawson Print: Book
'Jude the Obscure, Edward Carpenter's Love's Coming of Age, Grant Allen's The Woman Who Did, H.G. Well's The New Machiavelli and Ann Veronica, as well as the examples of Mary Wollstonecraft and George Eliot all made Eva [Slawson] think furiously about free love.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Eva Slawson Print: Book
'Percy Wall described his [colliery] institute as a "blatantly utilitarian" building with a "square cemented front" and a "drab, poorly lit" reading room, but it offered a wonderful escape from a dull Welsh village: "I could view the future through the words of H.G. Wells, participate in the elucidation of mysteries with Sherlock Holmes,... or penetrate darkest Africa with Rider Haggard as my guide. I could laugh at the comic frustrations of coaster seaman or bargee at the call of W.A. Jacobs. What a gloriously rich age it was for the storyteller!... When the stories palled there was always the illustrated weeklies with their pictures of people and conditions remote from my personal experience... I could laugh with Punch or Truth, although some of the humour was much too subtle for my limited education. Above all I could study the Review of Reviews and learn therein the complexities of foreign affairs.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Wall Print: Book
'[Helen Crawfurd] derived lessons in socialism and feminism from Carlyle, Shaw, Wells, Galsworthy, Arnold Bennett, Ibsen's Ghosts and A Doll's House, Dickens, Disraeli's Sybil, Mary Barton, Jude the Obscure, Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Under the Greenwood Tree, Tennyson's The Princess, Longfellow, Whitman, Burns, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, George Eliot, George Sand, the Brontes, Les Miserables and The Hunchback of Notre Dame'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Helen Crawfurd Print: Book
'George Scott left school and the boys' weeklies behind at fifteen: in barely a year he had absorbed enough Shaw, Wells, Dos Passos and (secondhand) Marx to lecture his parents on the evils of capitalism'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Scott Print: Book
'"[Penny dreadfuls] were thrilling, absolutely without sex interest, and of a high moral standard", explained London hatmaker Frederick Willis. "No boy would be any the worse for reading them and in many cases they encouraged and developed a love of reading that led him onwards and upwards on the fascinating path of literature. It was the beloved 'bloods' that first stimulated my love of reading, and from them I set out on the road to Shaw and Wells, Thackeray and Dickens, Fielding, Shakespeare and Chaucer".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Frederick Willis Print: Book
'After a miserable Catholic school education...periodic unemployment allowed [Joseph Toole] to study in the Manchester Reference Library. There he discovered, Adam Smith, Ricardo, Herbert Spencer, Huxley, Mill, Emerson, Dickens, Morris, Blatchford, Shaw and Wells, and of course John Ruskin..."Study always left me with a deep feeling that there was so much amiss with the world. It seemed that it had been started at the wrong end, and that it was everybody's business to put the matter right".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Toole Print: Book
'As a ?1-a-week warehouse clerk in the early 1920s, H.E. Bates spent most of the workday with Conrad, Hardy, Wells, Bennett, Galsworthy, Edith Wharton and Willa Cather'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Herbert Ernest Bates Print: Book
'[Ethel] Mannin was firmly rooted in the autodidact tradition. In her father's library she enjoyed Gissing and Wells, "Adam Bede" and "The Cloister and the Hearth". A Clapham letter-sorter, he collected Nelson's Sevenpenny Classics, which she applauded as "a great boon to poor people"... By age fifteen she was quoting Wilde, Dr Johnson, Francis Bacon, Shakespeare, Milton, Elizabeth Browning, Omar Khayyam, Anatole France, Emily Bronte, Shaw, Hazlitt, Stevenson, W.E. Henley, and Schopenhauer in her commonplace book...Except "Orlando", she read nothing of Virginia Woolf, whom she found "too intellectual, too subtle and complicated and remote from reality"...Mannin made sure to read "Ulysses" (or at least the final chapter) and she admired Gertrude Stein'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ethel Mannin Print: Book
As for me I am reading Wells on history! I think it wickeder than I did: but it's an amazing piece of book-making. When he gets past clerical & medieval times he's quite sound from a Left point of view till he gets to Napoleon! But [underlined] how [end underlining] jealous he is of all great men from Pericles and J. Caesar to everyone else. You see him saying: "No! I couldn't do what Alexander did. So I'll do for [underlined] his [end underlining] reputation!" And the joke of it is that he damns every one of them - Solomon, Mahomet, Alexander, Julius Caesar & the rest for being untrustworthy with women! I've never seen Satan so splendidly reprove sin.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ford Madox Ford Print: Book
'behind my back, E.J. is reading H.G.'s [underlined] Outline of History [end underlining] & making riotous comments on Amenhotep IV who she declares is a lidie with two heads'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Esther Julia Ford Print: Book
'Owen met H.G. Wells in November, one of the leading writers about the war and its politics, an advocate of internationalism, efficiency, the defeat of militarism by military means. Owen read at least two of his books in December'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Wilfred Owen Print: Book
'Thanks ever so much for the book. One would want a long and warm talk about it.To set down the several trains of thought suggested by your pages would take many pieces of papers like this. I must resist the temptation.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
' This is really great, great in every dimension. [...] I have read the book ["The New Machiavelli"] yesterday and this evening I re-read it from pp.290-504. I don't know what a "masterpiece" may be --but I know what masterwork is when I see it. And this is it.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'The meeting then considered the work of H.G. Wells. The chief item of interest was undoubtedly a paper by Henry M. Wallis upon Wells's romances but a better title would be 'A Critique of the Wells Method in Story-writing'. This was certainly one of the ablest papers which H.M.W. has contributed to the Book Club in recent years and gave rise to interesting discussion. R.H. Robson read one of the short stories to illustrate this side of Wells's literary works. Mrs Smith read a paper upon Mankind in the Making and Mary Hayward dealt with the novels, showing by extracts his views upon the English middle class, marriage, social life & religion.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Reginald Robson Print: Book
'The meeting then considered the work of H.G. Wells. The chief item of interest was undoubtedly a paper by Henry M. Wallis upon Wells's romances but a better title would be 'A Critique of the Wells Method in Story-writing'. This was certainly one of the ablest papers which H.M.W. has contributed to the Book Club in recent years and gave rise to interesting discussion. R.H. Robson read one of the short stories to illustrate this side of Wells's literary works. Mrs Smith read a paper upon Mankind in the Making and Mary Hayward dealt with the novels, showing by extracts his views upon the English middle class, marriage, social life & religion.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Marriage Wallis Print: Book
'The meeting then considered the work of H.G. Wells. The chief item of interest was undoubtedly a paper by Henry M. Wallis upon Wells's romances but a better title would be 'A Critique of the Wells Method in Story-writing'. This was certainly one of the ablest papers which H.M.W. has contributed to the Book Club in recent years and gave rise to interesting discussion. R.H. Robson read one of the short stories to illustrate this side of Wells's literary works. Mrs Smith read a paper upon Mankind in the Making and Mary Hayward dealt with the novels, showing by extracts his views upon the English middle class, marriage, social life & religion.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Ann Smith Print: Book
'The meeting then considered the work of H.G. Wells. The chief item of interest was undoubtedly a paper by Henry M. Wallis upon Wells's romances but a better title would be 'A Critique of the Wells Method in Story-writing'. This was certainly one of the ablest papers which H.M.W. has contributed to the Book Club in recent years and gave rise to interesting discussion. R.H. Robson read one of the short stories to illustrate this side of Wells's literary works. Mrs Smith read a paper upon Mankind in the Making and Mary Hayward dealt with the novels, showing by extracts his views upon the English middle class, marriage, social life & religion.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Hayward Print: Book
'The meeting then considered the work of H.G. Wells. The chief item of interest was undoubtedly a paper by Henry M. Wallis upon Wells's romances but a better title would be 'A Critique of the Wells Method in Story-writing'. This was certainly one of the ablest papers which H.M.W. has contributed to the Book Club in recent years and gave rise to interesting discussion. R.H. Robson read one of the short stories to illustrate this side of Wells's literary works. Mrs Smith read a paper upon Mankind in the Making and Mary Hayward dealt with the novels, showing by extracts his views upon the English middle class, marriage, social life & religion.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Hayward Print: Book
'The meeting then continued the discussion of H.G. Wells & his religious development. C.E. Stansfield had prepared an able paper dealing with this subject. He traced the growth of Wells' mind & thought as revealed in the series of published writings and showed by extracts from '1st & last things', 'God the invisible King' & 'The Soul of a Bishop' the striking development of his religious nature. Miss Hayward & Mrs Smith read extracts in support of this view.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Stansfield Print: Book
'The meeting then continued the discussion of H.G. Wells & his religious development. C.E. Stansfield had prepared an able paper dealing with this subject. He traced the growth of Wells' mind & thought as revealed in the series of published writings and showed by extracts from '1st & last things', 'God the invisible King' & 'The Soul of a Bishop' the striking development of his religious nature. Miss Hayward & Mrs Smith read extracts in support of this view.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Stansfield Print: Book
'The meeting then continued the discussion of H.G. Wells & his religious development. C.E. Stansfield had prepared an able paper dealing with this subject. He traced the growth of Wells' mind & thought as revealed in the series of published writings and showed by extracts from '1st & last things', 'God the invisible King' & 'The Soul of a Bishop' the striking development of his religious nature. Miss Hayward & Mrs Smith read extracts in support of this view.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Stansfield Print: Book
'The meeting then continued the discussion of H.G. Wells & his religious development. C.E. Stansfield had prepared an able paper dealing with this subject. He traced the growth of Wells' mind & thought as revealed in the series of published writings and showed by extracts from '1st & last things', 'God the invisible King' & 'The Soul of a Bishop' the striking development of his religious nature. Miss Hayward & Mrs Smith read extracts in support of this view.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Miss Hayward Print: Book
'The meeting then continued the discussion of H.G. Wells & his religious development. C.E. Stansfield had prepared an able paper dealing with this subject. He traced the growth of Wells' mind & thought as revealed in the series of published writings and showed by extracts from '1st & last things', 'God the invisible King' & 'The Soul of a Bishop' the striking development of his religious nature. Miss Hayward & Mrs Smith read extracts in support of this view.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Ann Smith Print: Book
'My diary for October 5th, 1932, recorded the impression made upon me by the writer whose "Modern Utopia" had been a beacon light of my schooldays:'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vera Brittain Print: Book
'They could no more accept it than they or any other powerful nation had ever accepted the teaching of his Master and Friend - for "to take him seriously", as H.G. Wells wrote of "this Galilean" in "The Outline of History", "was to enter upon a strange and alarming life, to abandon habits, to control instincts and impulses, to essay an incredible happiness...."'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vera Brittain Print: Book
'Saw most exciting smash of an aeroplane against the buildings and tents of the 13th. Squadron R.F.C. Machine turned turtle and nose dived. Pilot unhurt. Am doing a fair amount of reading. Enjoying "Ann Veronica" by H.G.Wells.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Lindsay Mackay Print: BookManuscript: Letter, Sheet
‘Bosch put heavies into the camp now and then. I was busy in a small way most of the day, in the afternoon read Shelley, and Wells’ “[The] Country of the Blind” with equal pleasure [...].'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edmund Blunden Print: Book
'C. [David Lloyd George] is in very good spirits after a week-end rest. Yesterday I went down to W.H. [Walton Heath] & spent the afternoon with him, & we had a jolly time. We have both been reading Wells' last book The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman and C. thinks it is his most brilliant work. Wells has modified his views considerably, though, since he wrote Anne Veronica!'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Frances Stevenson Print: Book
'C. [David Lloyd George] is in very good spirits after a week-end rest. Yesterday I went down to W.H. [Walton Heath] & spent the afternoon with him, & we had a jolly time. We have both been reading Wells' last book The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman and C. thinks it is his most brilliant work. Wells has modified his views considerably, though, since he wrote Anne Veronica!'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Frances Stevenson Print: Book
'C. [David Lloyd George] is in very good spirits after a week-end rest. Yesterday I went down to W.H. [Walton Heath] & spent the afternoon with him, & we had a jolly time. We have both been reading Wells' last book The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman and C. thinks it is his most brilliant work. Wells has modified his views considerably, though, since he wrote Anne Veronica!'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: David Lloyd George Print: Book
'Talked twenty minutes with two Egyptian officers who seemed a little out of the picture, and to bed, after fifty or sixty pages of "Mr Britling".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ronald Storrs Print: Book
'Read Kipling's "Diversities", Steevans "India", Wells "War [of the Worlds]" "Dynamiter" and a little Graham Wallas and Metchnikhoff, but with fatigue and unease.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ronald Storrs Print: Book
'Finished "Soul of a Bishop", containing some good meat as always, and thinnish plot.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ronald Storrs Print: Book
'Books read from Feby 16th/18
King Richard II Shakespeare
A Midsummer Night's Dream do.
Henry the Eighth do.
As You Like It do.
Ziska Marie Corelli
Lorna Doone R. D. Blackmore
Don Quixote de la mancha Vol II
(Miguel de Cervantes Savedra)
Food of the Gods H. G. Wells
Odette's Marriage Albert Delpit
A Walking Gentleman James Prior
The Making of a Marchioness F. H. Burnett
Vixen Mrs. Braddon
The Magnetic North Eliz. Robins
A Roman Singer Marion Crawford
In the Reign of Terror G. A. Henty
Songs of a Sourdough R. W. Service
Forest Folk James Prior
John Henry Hugh McHugh
The Inviolable Sanctuary G. A. Birmingham'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Henry Jones Print: Book
'11.30 service. Rather depressed. Ev Bridge Won. Read the Wayfarers & the Country of the Blind by HG Wells.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Thomas Print: Book
'When one has set aside the rubbish that H. G. Wells always puts in, there remains a great
deal of original, thoughtful and suggestive work in it. The "Door in the Wall", for instance,
moved me in a way I can hardly describe! How true it all is: the SEEING ONE walks out into
joy and happiness unthinkable, where the dull, senseless eyes of the world see only
destruction & death. "The Plattner Story" & "Under the Knife" are the next best: they have
given me a great deal of pleasure.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Clive Staples Lewis Print: Book
'I like this Digs far better than the Queen’s Hotel life.
It is the first time I ever shared rooms, in the Keats-Brown manner. I
confess [2/Lt A. R.] Rickard is not kin spiritually or literarily, but actually and
personally and militarily we agree famously. He has more than once been
mistaken for me.
I like Fleetwood.
Have finished tonight a fine novel by Wells: which I must shake off before
tomorrow. I shall go and inspect the men’s billets to see if they are
comfortable now.’
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Wilfred Owen Print: Book
‘Read Wells’ article in today’s Mail. Most important. I enclose it.’
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Wilfred Owen Print: Newspaper
‘I’ve been reading Wells’ "What is coming …" Hazlitt’s "Essays", and a glorious
book of critical essays by A. K. Thompson, called "The Greek Tradition". I read
no fiction. Wells’ "Wife of Sir Eric Harman" which I’ve just finished isn’t fiction.’
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Wilfred Owen Print: Book
‘I’ve been reading Wells’ "What is coming …" Hazlitt’s Essays, and a glorious
book of critical essays by A. K. Thompson, called "The Greek Tradition". I read
no fiction. Wells’ "Wife of Sir Eric Harman" which I’ve just finished isn’t fiction.’
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Wilfred Owen Print: Book
'Church parade over, the day was before us for what
we liked ... Jack Hinchcliffe would come across and
sit outside the tent chatting and reading the paper
before dinner; then in the afternoon it was very
pleasant to lie on the soft turf in the park with a
book from the YM[CA] hut library — I remember
I succeeded in getting several of H. G. Wells from
the YM[CA] and reading Kipps and Tono-
Bungay for the first time at Hursley.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Geoffrey Ratcliff Husbands Print: Book
'Church parade over, the day was before us for what
we liked ... Jack Hinchcliffe would come across and
sit outside the tent chatting and reading the paper
before dinner; then in the afternoon it was very
pleasant to lie on the soft turf in the park with a
book from the YM[CA] hut library — I remember
I succeeded in getting several of H. G. Wells from
the YM[CA] and reading Kipps and Tono-
Bungay for the first time at Hursley.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Geoffrey Ratcliff Husbands Print: Book
'I've just finished Wells's God the Invisible
King. I have to write a criticism of it for
the friend who sent it to me ... I began it with
the firm conviction that I was going to disagree
with it: I finished it in almost complete
agreement. Nevertheless, I don't like it. It
strikes me as the work of a hard nature
glossed over with sentiment.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Herbert Edward Read Print: Book
I am in the middle of a splendid and much-talked-
about book “Joan & Peter” by H.G. Wells, and in it
I find a brief description of “Pounce” which was
played in the book several years before the war.
It is the first time I have ever thoroughly
enjoyed a book by Wells.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arthur Morris Print: Book
