The War of the Worlds

wells-wow-001-folio__endH. G. Wells. The War of the Worlds [holograph manuscript, ca. 1897]. Wells WOW-001, folio 93a

In Wells’s enduringly popular 1898 scientific romance The War of the Worlds, the world comes close to being destroyed when Earth is invaded by the Martians, super-intelligent cyborgs with superior technology and a thirst for human blood. Humanity is only saved by the Martians’ lack of resistance to Earth’s bacteria. The story was first serialized in Pearson’s Magazine: these pages show Wells’s annotations and changes for the first book publication.

View the digitized version of the manuscript.