By the time he died on August 13, 1946, in London, Herbert George Wells was admired as a prophet and as an important social philosopher who helped shape the modern world; but at his birth on September 21, 1866, his future seemed likely to be one of little education, poorly paying jobs, and anonymity. His father was a professional cricket player and shopkeeper, and his mother was a maidservant.

From 1874 to 1880, Wells attended Thomas Morley's Commercial Academy, and as a fourteen-year-old he was apprenticed first to a dry goods merchant and later to a druggist. When seventeen, he tried to become a teacher in a rural area, then in 1884 he won a scholarship to the Normal School of Science. He left in 1887 without obtaining a degree. In that year he fell severely ill, and his future seemed bleak. In 1891 he married his cousin Isabell Mary Wells, and the...