60 Fun Facts About H. G. Wells

In which Kent town was H. G. Wells born in 1866?

He was born at Atlas House on the High Street, the fourth child of a shopkeeper and cricketer.

What did Wells's father Joseph do to earn an unsteady income besides keeping a china shop?

A fractured femur in 1877 ended his cricket career and the family's main source of income.

What childhood accident in 1874 turned young Wells into a devoted reader?

His father brought him books from the local library to pass the time.

Wells's miserable teenage apprenticeship at Hyde's Drapery Emporium in Southsea inspired which novels?

He worked thirteen-hour days and slept in a dormitory; The Wheels of Chance also drew on the experience.

At which West Sussex country house, where his mother was a lady's maid, did H. G. Wells devour the library?

He read Plato's Republic, More's Utopia and Defoe there.

Under which famous biologist did Wells study at the Normal School of Science in South Kensington?

His weekly scholarship allowance was 21 shillings, yet photographs show him thin and malnourished.

A precursor to The Time Machine appeared in Wells's school magazine under what title?

He was among the founders of The Science School Journal.

Which future children's author did Wells teach at Henley House School in 1889-90?

The school was run by Milne's father; Wells's first published work was a two-volume Text-Book of Biology.

Whom did Wells marry in 1891?

They separated in 1894 when he fell for his student Amy Catherine Robbins, whom he called Jane and married in 1895.

In which Surrey town did Wells write The War of the Worlds and The Time Machine?

He lived at 'Lynton' on Maybury Road; the Martians land on nearby Horsell Common in the novel.

What did Wells name the large family home he built at Sandgate near Folkestone in 1901?

His sons Gip and Frank were born there; Frank was grandfather of film director Simon Wells.

Wells had a son, Anthony, in 1914 with which novelist and feminist 26 years his junior?

Anthony West became a writer and critic himself.

Which American birth-control activist had a love affair with Wells from 1920 until his death?

Wells also lampooned Beatrice and Sidney Webb as 'Altiora and Oscar Bailey' in The New Machiavelli after Beatrice criticized his affair with Amber Reeves.

Moura Budberg had been the mistress of which Russian writer when Wells first met her?

She repeatedly refused Wells's proposals of marriage.

What did Wells call the comic sketches he drew for his wife Jane, often about their marriage?

A book about them was published in 2006.

To what year does the Time Traveller journey in The Time Machine?

He finds humanity split into the childlike Eloi and the subterranean Morlocks.

The Eloi in The Time Machine are thought to have been inspired partly by which William Morris utopia?

Wells's future is far more savage than Morris's, with the Morlocks preying on the Eloi.

What is the name of the scientist who makes himself invisible in The Invisible Man?

An albino former medical student obsessed with optics, he becomes an icon of horror fiction.

The Invisible Man arrives during a snowstorm at an inn in which West Sussex village?

He later reveals his identity to Dr Kemp, an old acquaintance from medical school.

Who narrates The Island of Doctor Moreau after surviving the shipwreck of the Lady Vain?

Moreau was an eminent London physiologist exposed by a journalist for his gruesome vivisection experiments.

Doctor Moreau creates his human-like Beast Folk by what method?

The novel is considered the earliest depiction of 'uplift' in fiction.

Where does the first Martian cylinder land in The War of the Worlds?

The narrator's unnamed brother escapes to Tillingham in Essex as London is overrun.

In which British periodical was The War of the Worlds serialised in 1897?

Cosmopolitan carried it in the United States the same year.

Besides the heat-ray, what alien vegetation do the Martians spread in The War of the Worlds?

It spreads wherever there is water but is already dying when the narrator finds it.

Which prime minister borrowed the phrase 'the gathering storm' from The War of the Worlds?

Churchill was an avid Wells reader; the two met in 1902 and belonged to The Other Club.

On what date did Orson Welles's Mercury Theatre broadcast its famous radio War of the Worlds?

Wells and Welles finally met on air in San Antonio in October 1940, and Wells thanked him for boosting sales.

In The First Men in the Moon, what gravity-blocking substance does Mr Cavor invent?

He and Bedford build a spherical spacecraft with it and find insect-like Selenites living inside the Moon.

A plot point in The First Men in the Moon was inspired by which inventor's claim of radio signals from Mars?

Wells used the idea of radio communication between astronomical objects.

In which 1914 novel did Wells coin the term 'atomic bombs' and describe a nuclear weapon?

He dedicated it to Frederick Soddy; Leó Szilárd read it in 1932, the year the neutron was discovered.

Which 1901 bestseller, subtitled 'An Experiment in Prophecy', foresaw suburbs, sexual freedom and a European Union?

Its misses included doubting aircraft before 1950 and imagining submarines could only 'suffocate its crew and founder at sea'.

Which two-volume 1920 work made Wells a rich man and launched a fashion for 'Outlines'?

It sold more than two million copies; Canadian teacher Florence Deeks unsuccessfully sued him for plagiarism.

Which physicist praised Wells's 1922 A Short History of the World?

Wells wrote The Science of Life with his son G. P. Wells and biologist Julian Huxley.

Wells's 1933 novel The Shape of Things to Come predicted a world war beginning in which month?

The real war began four months earlier than he predicted; he adapted the book into Korda's 1936 film Things to Come.

Who produced the 1936 film Things to Come, written by Wells?

William Cameron Menzies directed and Raymond Massey starred; it became a landmark of production design.

Which of Wells's novels was reportedly his own favourite and became the musical Half a Sixpence?

Artie Kipps is apprenticed at 14 to a Folkestone drapery, and Ann gives him half a sixpence as a love token.

Alfred Polly, hero of The History of Mr Polly, keeps an outfitter's shop in which imaginary Kent town?

Sinclair Lewis's early novels were strongly influenced by the book, and Lewis named his first son Wells.

In Wells's 'The Country of the Blind', Nuñez falls into a valley of blind people in which country?

He recites 'In the Country of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is King' but the villagers plan to remove his eyes.

Wells's 1913 book Little Wars set out rules for what?

The idea grew from Jerome K. Jerome shooting down toy soldiers with a toy cannon after dinner.

Which famous phrase did Wells coin in a 1914 book title about the First World War?

He later used the shorter form 'the war to end war', which became one of the most common catchphrases of the conflict.

Which Soviet leader did Wells interview for three hours in 1934 for the New Statesman?

He had met Lenin through Maxim Gorky in 1920 and wrote Russia in the Shadows about that trip.

As president of which writers' body did Wells oversee the expulsion of its German branch in 1934?

The Nazis had burned his books in Berlin's Opernplatz on 10 May 1933.

Wells's name appeared on which Nazi list of people to be arrested after an invasion of Britain?

It was compiled by the SS for the abandoned Operation Sea Lion.

For which party did Wells stand as a parliamentary candidate for London University in 1922 and 1923?

He was a Fabian socialist, though he quarrelled bitterly with the Webbs.

Wells's 1940 book The Rights of Man is credited with laying groundwork for which 1948 UN text?

It was adopted by the United Nations shortly after his death.

Wells was a co-founder in 1934 of which charity, later renamed Diabetes UK?

He was himself diabetic.

Wells's 1936 proposal for a constantly updated 'World Encyclopaedia' is often compared to what?

He collected the idea in the 1938 essays World Brain.

How many times was Wells nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature?

Sinclair Lewis was among those who nominated him, in 1932; the other years were 1921, 1935 and 1946.

What epitaph did Wells say he wanted, in his preface to the 1941 edition of The War in the Air?

He died at 13 Hanover Terrace, Regent's Park, in 1946, aged 79.

Where were Wells's ashes scattered?

The rocks are the eastern tip of Dorset's Jurassic Coast, near Swanage.

Which writer hailed Wells in 1898 as 'O Realist of the Fantastic!'?

'Wells's law' held that a story should contain only a single extraordinary assumption amid commonplace detail.

Which science-fiction author called Wells 'the Shakespeare of science fiction'?

Charles Fort called him a 'wild talent', and George Orwell said he was 'too sane to understand the modern world'.

What did Wells title his 1934 memoir?

In it he wrote, 'I was never a great amorist, though I have loved several people very deeply'.

Wells's last book, published in 1945, was titled what?

In it he considered that humanity's replacement by another species might not be a bad idea.

Wells's 1943 book Crux Ansata was an indictment of what?

He attacked Pope Pius XII and even called for the bombing of Rome.

In which 1911 novel did Wells caricature Beatrice and Sidney Webb as 'Altiora and Oscar Bailey'?

He was retaliating for Beatrice's disapproval of his 'sordid intrigue' with Amber Reeves.

Which planet's craters, along with the Moon's, were named after Wells?

Ridley Scott featured him in the 2011 series Prophets of Science Fiction.

Which novelist, famous for a book about her German garden, was Wells's mistress between 1910 and 1913?

Wells's list of lovers also included Dorothy Richardson and the Dutch writer Odette Keun.

To which chemist, later a Nobel laureate for isotopes, did Wells dedicate The World Set Free?

Physicist Leo Szilard read the book in 1932 and later said it made a very great impression on him.

In which subject did Wells finally earn his Bachelor of Science degree in 1890?

He took it through the University of London External Programme after leaving the Normal School of Science without a degree.

Wells died in 1946 at 13 Hanover Terrace, overlooking which London green space?

A Greater London Council blue plaque was installed at the house in 1966.