A fascinating journey into the life of H.G. Wells, from one of Britain's best biographers

How did the first forty years of H. G. Wells' life shape the father of science fiction?

From his impoverished childhood in a working-class English family, to his determination to educate himself at any cost, to the serious ill health that dominated his twenties and thirties, his complicated marriages, and love affair with socialism, the first forty years of H. G. Wells' extraordinary life would set him on a path to become one of the world's most influential writers. The sudden success of The Time Machine and The War of The Worlds transformed his life and catapulted him to international fame; he became the writer who most inspired Orwell and countless others, and predicted men walking on the moon seventy years before it happened.

In this remarkable, empathetic biography, Claire Tomalin paints a fascinating portrait of a man like no other, driven by curiosity and desiring reform, a socialist and a futurist whose new and imaginative worlds continue to inspire today.

'The finest of biographers' Hilary Mantel

'A most intelligent and sympathetic biographer' Daily Telegraph

'One of the best biographers of her generation' Guardian

About the Author
Claire Tomalin is the author of seven highly acclaimed biographies, including her most recent autobiography 'A Life of My Own', which was a Sunday Times bestseller. Her previous book on Dickens, The Invisible Woman, an account of his relationship with the actress Ellen Ternan, won three major literary prizes. A former literary editor of the New Statesman and the Sunday Times, she is married to the playwright and novelist Michael Frayn.

Reviews
You put down Tomalin's book knowing you have met a living author * The Times *
Richly informative... Tomalin admits that, although she set out to write about the young Wells, she has followed him into his forties because she found him 'too interesting to leave'. The same can be said of her book * Sunday Times *



Book Information
ISBN 9780241974858
Author Claire Tomalin
Format Paperback
Page Count 272
Imprint Penguin Books Ltd
Publisher Penguin Books Ltd
Weight(grams) 203g
Dimensions(mm) 198mm * 129mm * 17mm