Herbert George Wells was born in Bromley, Kent, England, on September 21, 1866. His father was an unprosperous shop keeper, his mother a head housekeeper for a Sussex estate.

Wells always loved to read, but his early formal education was uneven. At thirteen, he was apprenticed to a dry goods merchant. Four years later, after negotiating a release from his apprenticeship agreement, he obtained a teaching position at Midhurst Grammar School and simultaneously continued his studies. A year later, at eighteen, he won a scholarship to the Normal School of Science at South Kensington. There he studied under T. H.

Huxley, whose ideas on biology and science were a lasting influence. During three years of study, he participated in the socialist gatherings of the Fabian Society in London.

After brief stints as a biology teacher, reader for a correspondence school, and textbook writer, Wells turned to...