The English writer Herbert Wells is recognized as one of the founders and classics of science fiction literature of the XX century. Throughout his life he created about 40 novels. Many of the ideas and thoughts expressed by him in literary works were ahead of their time. And even today, interest in the work of Wells remains huge.
Childhood, youth and first marriage
Herbert George Wells's date of birth is September 21, 1866. Place of birth - the small town of Bromley near London. Herbert George's parents owned a china shop. But trade practically did not bring profit, mainly the family lived on the funds that his father earned by playing cricket (he was a professional cricketer).
Herbert Wells began working at the age of 14 - first as a janitor and cashier in a manufactory shop, then as a pharmacy laboratory assistant and school teacher. Thanks to his perseverance, Wells managed to enter Kings College, which trained science teachers. And by 1889 he received a license in biology, and a year later - a bachelor's degree.
In 1891, Herbert Wells first married a girl named Isabella. This marriage union lasted about four years, after which the couple, very different from each other in character and temperament, broke up.
The writer's work from 1893 to 1914
In 1893, Wells began to try his hand at journalism and write texts for various periodicals. Some of them later entered the 1895 collection, Selected Talks with Uncle. In the same 1895, his novel Time Machine was published. He was a huge success, the author immediately became famous.
In 1895, there was another important event in the biography of Wells - he married a second time. The spouse's name was Amy Katherine Robbins. This marriage lasted more than thirty years. Amy Catherine gave birth to two sons from a science fiction writer - George Philip and Frank Richard.
After The Time Machine, the writer created several other great science fiction novels - The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896), War of the Worlds (1898), and The Invisible Man (1897). "When the Sleeping One wakes up" (1899), "The First People on the Moon" (1901). Almost all of them were filmed in the future.
From 1903 to 1909, Wells was a member of the Fabian society, which advocated the gradual, without revolution and upheaval, transformation of the capitalist system into a socialist one.
In 1914, immediately after the outbreak of World War II, Wells published a series of essays on the current geopolitical situation. Then they were published as a separate book, which was distributed in Europe in huge print runs.
Herbert Wells after the First World War
Wells came to the Soviet Union in 1920. During this visit, he even met with Vladimir Lenin. Wells outlined his impressions of the recently emerged Bolshevik state in a work with the telling title "Russia in the Dark."
In 1928, the writer’s wife, Amy Katherine, died of cancer. Wells' new serious love was Maria Zakrevskaya-Budberg, who emigrated to England from the USSR in 1933. The relationship between the writer and this attractive woman continued until the end of Wells's life, however, an official marriage was never concluded.
In 1934, Wells again visited the USSR, and again he managed to communicate with the head of state - only now it was not Lenin, but Stalin. In detail about the meeting with the leader, Wells then wrote in a memoir book, "An Experience in Autobiography."
