Wells · 1898
H.G. Wells publishes The War of the Worlds
In late January 1898, on the publication-day of Tuesday the eighteenth of January 1898 at the London publishing-house William Heinemann at 21 Bedford Street in Covent Garden, the thirty-one-year-old Bromley, Kent-born British scientific-romance novelist Herbert George Wells, on the strength of the three-previous-scientific-romance novels he had published across 1895-to-1897 (The Time Machine 1895, The Island of Doctor Moreau 1896, The Invisible Man 1897 on the Wells-Heinemann-and-Pearson's-Magazine publishing-circuit), published the completed-volume of his fourth scientific-romance novel The War of the Worlds (the Martian-invasion-of-southern-England novel that had been serialised in Pearson's Magazine across the April-to-December 1897 nine-issue serialisation under the original-serial-title The Coming of the Martians). The War-of-the-Worlds is the foundational alien-invasion novel of the modern English-language science-fiction tradition: the Martian-tripod-machines-and-heat-ray-and-Black-Smoke invasion-narrative across the Surrey-and-Middlesex-and-London southern-English-counties geographic setting, the Wells narrator-walker reporting from the Woking-and-Horsell-Common landing-site through the Surrey-Middlesex retreat-to-London and the Whitechapel-and-Crystal-Palace London-collapse-period, the Martians' subsequent bacterial-collapse on the Common-cold-and-related-Earth-microorganism immunity-failure. The War-of-the-Worlds has been continuously in publication since 1898, has been adapted into the Orson-Welles 1938-Mercury-Theatre-on-the-Air radio-broadcast (the famous-Halloween-Eve broadcast that produced the American-public-panic on the Martian-invasion-fictional-broadcast misinterpretation), the 1953-Byron-Haskin Paramount-Pictures film, the 1978-Jeff-Wayne progressive-rock musical-album, and the 2005-Steven-Spielberg Paramount-Pictures film with Tom Cruise. The War-of-the-Worlds is the foundational template of the modern science-fiction alien-invasion narrative-genre.
A literary genre is rarely founded by a single novel published in late January at a small London publishing-house by a thirty-one-year-old draper's-son-and-science-teacher-turned-novelist. Wells had spent the three-years of his 1895-to-1897 scientific-romance period building the foundational scientific-romance series (The Time Machine, The Island of Doctor Moreau, The Invisible Man) on the H.G.-Wells-and-Heinemann-and-Pearson's-Magazine publishing-circuit, and by the late-1897 period was the leading-scientific-romance writer in the English-language popular-magazine-and-novel publishing market. The War-of-the-Worlds was the fourth-volume of the Wells-scientific-romance series and the foundational alien-invasion novel of the modern English-language science-fiction tradition.
THE BROMLEY DRAPER'S SON
Herbert George Wells was born at 47 High Street in Bromley, Kent, on the twenty-first of September 1866, third son of Joseph Wells, a Kent professional-cricketer and small-Bromley draper, and Sarah Neal, a Sussex domestic-servant turned housekeeper at the Uppark estate-house in Sussex. He was raised in the financial-poverty-Bromley family of the 1870s-and-1880s, was schooled at Thomas Morley's Commercial Academy in Bromley to the standard-Victorian commercial-school standard, and on the 1879-to-1881 period (his thirteenth-to-fifteenth-year) was apprenticed as a draper's-assistant at the Hyde's Drapery Emporium in Southsea on the Sarah-Wells-domestic-servant employer placement.
He escaped the Hyde's-Drapery apprenticeship in 1883 in his seventeenth-year on the personal-academic-determination, took the Midhurst-Grammar-School junior-teacher-position on the strength of his Royal-Crown-Hotel evening-self-study commitment, won the Normal-School-of-Science Royal-Government scholarship to the Normal School of Science (the modern Imperial College London) in 1884 in his eighteenth-year on the Royal-Government science-scholarship-test-result, studied biology under T. H. Huxley at the Normal-School across 1884-to-1887, took the BSc in biology in 1890 in his twenty-fourth-year, and through 1887-to-1893 worked as a junior-science-teacher at various London-and-provincial schools-and-colleges.
THE 1895-TO-1897 SCIENTIFIC ROMANCES
He began his full-time-writing-career in 1893 in his twenty-seventh-year on the personal-determination after the tuberculosis-diagnosis that effectively-ended his schoolteacher-career. He published the first scientific-romance novel The Time Machine in serial in The New Review across January-to-May 1895 (the foundational time-travel-narrative novel of the modern English-language science-fiction tradition) and in book-form at William Heinemann in May 1895. He published The Island of Doctor Moreau in book-form at William Heinemann in April 1896 (the vivisection-and-genetic-modification island-narrative novel on the Wells-Huxley scientific-ethics theme), and The Invisible Man in serial in Pearson's Weekly across June-to-August 1897 (the invisibility scientific-romance novel) and in book-form at C. Arthur Pearson in September 1897.
THE PEARSON'S MAGAZINE SERIALISATION
He began the War-of-the-Worlds composition in the summer of 1895 in his twenty-ninth-year on the Pearson's Magazine commission for a serial-publication arrangement. He completed the novel-text across the 1896-and-early-1897 period at his Heatherlea-Worcester-Park Surrey rented-house (the Surrey-suburban setting of the Wells-Worcester-Park 1896-and-1897 residence that became the foundational geographic-setting of the War-of-the-Worlds narrative). The novel was serialised in Pearson's Magazine across the nine-monthly-issues from April-to-December 1897 (the original-serial-title was The Coming of the Martians; the book-publication-title The War of the Worlds was adopted on the Heinemann-Wells book-publication decision).
THE EIGHTEENTH OF JANUARY
Heinemann published the book-edition of The War of the Worlds on the eighteenth of January 1898 in the William-Heinemann 21-Bedford-Street Covent-Garden publishing-house standard-octavo edition at the six-shillings cover-price. The print-run was approximately 5,000 copies for the first edition (the Heinemann-Wells contract terms of the late-1897 publication-contract arrangement), and the first-edition sold out within the three-month spring-1898 period. The second-edition print-run of approximately 7,500 copies followed across the summer of 1898, and the novel was continuously in publication across the Heinemann-and-subsequent-Heinemann-Penguin-and-Modern-Library publication-history continuously since.
THE WAR-OF-THE-WORLDS NARRATIVE
The War-of-the-Worlds is the Martian-invasion-of-southern-England narrative across the Surrey-and-Middlesex-and-London southern-English-counties geographic-setting. The Wells-narrator-walker (an unnamed Woking-Surrey resident-philosopher) reports the narrative across the Woking-and-Horsell-Common landing-site in the opening-Chapters 1-to-9 (the Martian-cylinder landing at the Horsell-Common-Surrey, the Martian-tripod-machine emergence, the Martian-Heat-Ray attack on the Surrey-cavalry, the Black-Smoke poison-gas attack on the Weybridge-and-Walton-on-Thames Surrey-towns), through the Surrey-Middlesex retreat-to-London in the Chapters 10-to-17 (the Wells-narrator-walker's retreat from Woking through the Middlesex-counties to the Westminster-and-Pall-Mall central-London late-1897 setting), and the Whitechapel-and-Crystal-Palace London-collapse-and-Martian-bacterial-collapse in the closing Chapters 18-to-27. The Martians' final collapse is on the Earth-bacterial-immunity failure (the Wells biological-irony that the Martians who had survived the Earth-civilian-and-military resistance had no immunological resistance to the Earth bacterial-microorganisms that the Earth-human-population had evolved-against across the evolutionary-Earth-microbial-history).
THE STANDING WORLD ADAPTATIONS
The War-of-the-Worlds has been continuously in publication since 1898 (over 100 language-translations and approximately 700 different edition-printings across the 1898-to-2025 publication-history). The Orson-Welles Mercury-Theatre-on-the-Air radio-broadcast of the Halloween-Eve of the thirtieth of October 1938 (the CBS-Mercury-Theatre 60-minute live-radio-broadcast adaptation of the Wells-novel under the Welles direction at the CBS-New-York studio) produced the famous-American-public-panic on the Martian-invasion-fictional-broadcast misinterpretation (the 1938 American-public was approximately 6 million live-listeners; approximately 1.2 million had taken the broadcast as a real-news-bulletin on the WWII-pre-broadcast period setting). The 1953-Byron-Haskin Paramount-Pictures film, the 1978-Jeff-Wayne progressive-rock musical-album (the Jeff-Wayne War-of-the-Worlds musical-album of the double-LP that has sold over 15 million copies since 1978), and the 2005-Steven-Spielberg Paramount-Pictures film with Tom Cruise are the subsequent major-adaptation milestones.
Wells continued the prolific-novelist-and-essayist career across the next five decades to his death (he wrote over 100 published-books across 1893-to-1946, including The First Men in the Moon (1901), Tono-Bungay (1909), Ann Veronica (1909), The History of Mr Polly (1910), Mr Britling Sees It Through (1916) and The Outline of History (1920) the 2-million-copy bestseller world-history). He died at his Hanover Terrace London home on the thirteenth of August 1946 in his eightieth year. The Wells name in modern English-language science-fiction-and-popular-literature carries the weight of the William Heinemann publication-day of the eighteenth of January 1898.