H.G. WELLS

In this course we will read the works of one of the 20 th century’s most overlooked geniuses, H. G. Wells. This is the first time in Columbia’s history that a course has been dedicated to Wells, even though he is one of the great visionaries of the first half of the century, whose innovation and influence across different genres of writing was extraordinary (these genres include science fiction, which he helped to invent; the short story, of which he wrote some of the best in the modernist period; the social novel, to which he contributed several breathtaking examples; the essay-novel, a great genre for him which has never been sufficiently appreciated by literary critics; popular history, science, and economics, which he put on the map; and the essay as a political text for the activist citizen). We will read across the full range of his writings, including all the genres named above, covering nearly 50 years of writing, from his breakout novel The Time Machine (1895) to late works on the future (including film) in the 1930s and 40s. Still, we will only be scratching the surface for a writer whose full bibliography includes 6000 items. In reading Wells’s works, moreover, we will place them in conversation with his modernist peers (Henry James, Joseph Conrad, Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, George Orwell) and with many critical topics on which he was passionately engaged, including evolution, empire, gender, social class, war, technology, education and the writing of history. We might think of our effort in this course as a rare opportunity to engage in depth, and with a totally fresh perspective, one of the most interesting, important, and unrecognized intellects of the century.