H. G. Wells, sepia halftone reproduction of a photograph by Elliott & Fry, for a "Literature" supplement featuring portraits of writers. 1901. Size: 5 7/8 in. x 8 in. (148 mm x 202 mm). © National Portrait Gallery, London. NPG x45778, acquired 1970, source unknown. [Click on the image to enlarge it, and mouse over the text for links.]

This is the full National Portrait Gallery image of the young Wells, with its mounting. Wells was now a famous author. This was the year in which his first post-Victorian novel, The First Men in the Moon, was published, and in which he and his wife Jane started their family: their first child, George Philip Wells ("Gip"), was born that summer, on 17 July. Ironically, perhaps, now that Wells seemed to have settled down into staid respectability, it was also the time around which he and his wife reached a "compromise" about his affairs with other women (see Mackenzie 156). — Jacqueline Banerjee

Related Material

Source

Mackenzie, Norman & Jeanne. The Time Traveller: The Life of H. G. Wells. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1973.


Created 13 January 2016