His 1927
The Short Stories of H. G. Wells (republished as
The Complete Short Stories, though not in fact complete) runs to 1,028 pages. But though Wells continued to write both fiction and nonfiction prolifically until his death in 1946, an essentially complete edition of the stories could have been compiled by 1910. He published one novella and four collections of short stories between 1895 and 1903; after that he continued to publish new collections of short stories, but they were primarily made up of work that had already appeared in the four original collections. Aside from apprentice work, Wells wrote eighty-one stories; of these, fully sixty-eight were written by 1903, and all but seven by 1910. Such a situation might seem to bode ill for the quality of the stories. Wells's stories are the products of his youth, but for this very reason they are the portion of his life's work that will be longest remembered. Much of Wells's late writing, most critics agree, is seriously marred by self-righteous preaching; the short stories, written earlier, are largely spared this infelicity, though hints of the bombast to come are just visible to the discerning eye.
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