By the time he died on August 13, 1946, in London, Herbert George Wells was admired as a prophet and social philosopher who helped shape the modern world. But at his birth on September 21, 1866, in Bromley, Kent, Wells's future seemed likely to be one of little education, low-paying jobs, and anonymity. His father was a professional cricket player and shopkeeper, and his mother a maidservant. From 1874 to 1880, Wells attended Thomas Morley's Commercial Academy. At fourteen he was apprenticed in turn to a draper and a druggist, and he later tried to become a rural schoolteacher. He won a scholarship to the Normal School of Science in 1884, but left in 1887 without obtaining a degree and soon fell severely ill. Underweight, poor, and sickly, his future seemed bleak. In 1891 he married his cousin Isabell Mary Wells, but the marriage soon foundered.

Out of these unhappy experiences emerged Wells's...