Authors: David Lodge
Other books and articles I read or consulted in connection with this project include: Ruth Brandon,
The New Women and the Old Men: Love, Sex, and the Woman Question
(1990); John Carey,
The Intellectuals and the Masses
(1993); Margaret Drabble, ‘Introduction’ to
Ann Veronica
by H.G. Wells (Penguin Classics edn, 2005), and ‘A Room of her Own’ (on Amber Reeves),
Guardian
(2 April 2005); Samuel Hynes,
The Edwardian Turn of Mind
(1968); Edward R. Pease,
The History of the Fabian Society
(1916); W. Boyd Rayward, ‘H.G. Wells’s Idea of a World Brain: a Critical Re-Assessment’,
Journal of the American Society for Information Science
50 (15 May 1999); Katie Roiphe,
Uncommon Arrangements: Seven Portraits of Married Life in London Literary Circles
(2007); Miranda Seymour,
A Ring of Conspirators: Henry James and his Literary Circle 1895–1915
(1988); and Philip Waller,
Writers, Readers, & Reputations: Literary Life in Britain 1870–1918
(2006).
I am very grateful to A.P. Watt, acting on behalf of the estate of H.G. Wells, for permission to quote extensively from the works and letters of H.G. Wells, and from letters of his wife Amy Catherine Wells; to the Society of Authors acting on behalf of the Bernard Shaw Estate for permission to quote from his letters to H.G. Wells; and to Dr Dusa McDuff for permission to quote extracts from three letters of Amber Reeves. Extracts from articles in
The Young Rebecca
(© Rebecca West, 1982) and from a personal letter of Rebecca West (© Rebecca West, 1974) are reproduced by permission of Peters, Fraser and Dunlop (
www.pfd.co.uk
) on behalf of the Estate of Rebecca West.
Quotations from letters are very useful in a novel of this kind because, as well as revealing the personality and motivation of the characters, they provide evidence to the reader of the factual authenticity of the narrative. There were a few occasions however when I felt obliged to compose fictional letters or fragments of them, either because the originals were unobtainable, or because it seemed the most plausible means for information to be passed from one person to another. All have some basis in the biographical source material; none is attributed to H.G. Wells. They are as follows: Rosamund Bland to H.G., telling him that her mother has found a compromising letter from him (
see here
); Sydney Olivier to Wells, warning of Hubert Bland’s accusations of libertinism against him (
see here
); Dorothy Richardson to Wells, informing him of her miscarriage (
see here
); Edith Bland to Jane Wells, attacking her for condoning H.G.’s womanising (
see here
); Maud Reeves to the Wellses, asking if Amber can stay with them in the Easter vacation of 1908 (
see here
); Rebecca West to H.G., following his visit to her family home (
see here
) and her response to his report of Henry James’s comments on
Marriage
(
see here
).
I am grateful to the staff of several libraries whose resources assisted my research: the London Library, the University of Birmingham Library (including its Special Collections department), the Folkestone Library, the Birmingham Reference Library, The British Library (including its Sound Archive where I was able to listen to a BBC radio interview with Amber Reeves recorded in 1970), and the Women’s Library of London Metropolitan University. Paul Burns, the owner of H.G. Wells’s former home, Spade House, Sandgate, now a residential Care Home for the elderly, kindly suspended his normal rules and allowed me to view and photograph the exterior of the house and its gardens. Andrea Lynn and Michael Sherborne gave me invaluable help in tracing copyright holders of quoted material. I am very grateful to those who read this book at various stages of its composition and commented helpfully on it: Bernard Bergonzi, Maurice Couturier, Jonny Geller, John Hick, Geoff Mulligan, Claire Tomalin, Paul Slovak, Tom Rosenthal, Mike Shaw, and, as always, my wife Mary.
D. L.
October, 2010