H. G. Wells and the Wartime Imagination

Abstract

No figure is more powerful as a symbol of mass warfare in the twentieth century than the civilian, whose vulnerability on a world scale challenges the moral life of our societies. The story of the civilian has recently become the focus of scholarship on the First World War. This paper discusses some of the wartime writings of H. G. Wells – arguably the most influential and widely-read civilian writer during and immediately after the war, who has been completely overlooked by literary critics and war scholars – to argue that in several wartime works with huge readerships, Wells took up the position of civilian in new and activist terms, first, as a matter of imagination, and second, as a matter of responsibility. Wells's textual efforts intersect in intriguing ways with more familiar war writings, but also depart quite radically from them, as he boldly assigns the role of world pacifist to those at home – out of combat, but sharing with soldiers a sense of rage and frustration, and a belief that such violence must not become the world's norm.