Later in his life, seeing his dreams of world government and universal peace diminish in the face of the rise of fascism and the likelihood of another World War, Wells turned his attention to ensuring freedoms at the level of every individual.

The Rights of Man; or, What Are We Fighting For?

wells-ri-001-folio-629_rv_human_300H. G. Wells. The Rights of Man; or, What Are We Fighting For?
[typescript, ca. 1940].
Wells RI-001, folio 629

In the early months of World War Two, Wells wrote a series of letters to The Times, in which he argued for the establishment of universal human rights, such as the rights to life, education, property, labor and free movement, as the only meaningful outcome of the Second World War.

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The Rights of Man; or, What Are We Fighting For?

whatarewefightingfor_human_300H. G. Wells. The Rights of Man; or, What Are We Fighting For?
Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1940.
Wells 940.93 W46r

Wells’s The Rights of Man, which argued for universal human rights as ‘the basis of a new and happier way of life,’ was written collaboratively by a committee chaired by Lord Chancellor John Sankey, and was published as a ‘Penguin Special’ in 1940. The Library holds translations of the document into many European, African and Asian languages.

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Mind at the End of its Tether

wells-824_spread_human_300H. G. Wells. Mind at the End of its Tether. London: William Heinemann, 1945.
Wells 824 W46m 1945

Wells struggled between optimism and pessimism: as The Time Machine warned what humanity might become if humanity did not mend its ways, so his final book Mind at the End of Its Tether despairs that our species must inevitably come to its end.

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Your Human Rights:The Universal Declaration of Human Rights Proclaimed by the United Nations. December 10, 1948

yourhumanrights_1950_25_spread_human_300Your Human Rights: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Proclaimed by the United Nations. December 10, 1948. Introduction by Eleanor Roosevelt. New York: Ellner Publishers, 1950.
323.4 Un36y

The thirty articles of the United Nations’ 1948 declaration of Universal Human Rights show the influence of Wells’s The Rights of Man. The International Bill of Human Rights acquired legal power in 1976.

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