Category: The Time Machine
The Time Machine (1895) was Wells’s first full- length work of fiction. The Time Traveler invents a device for traveling through time and journeys to the year 802,701. Expecting to see a more advanced civilization, he is horrified to discover that humanity has degenerated into the species of the Eloi and the Morlocks, the descendants of the rich and the poor: a terrible warning for humanity if it continues to ignore economic inequality.
The Time Machine is Wells’s best known work, and has never been out of print. It is both a literary classic and a foundational text in the history science fiction, translated into many languages.
H. G. Wells. The Time Machine: An Invention. London: William Heinemann, 1895.The first U.K. edition of The Time Machine, now a very valuable item, features a sphinx embossed on the front cover. The statue of a mysterious sphinx is the first thing that the Time Traveler sees when he arrives in the year 802,701.
H. G. Wells. The Time Machine: An Invention. New York: H. Holt and Company, 1895.The American first edition of The Time Machine features a slightly different text from subsequent versions. On the title page, authorship is incorrectly ascribed to ‘H. S. Wells.’
H. G. Wells. The Time Machine: An Invention; with a preface by the author written for this edition; and designs by W.A. Dwiggins. New York: Random House, 1931.Thirty-six years after The Time Machine’s publication, Wells, now a world- famous author and public intellectual, revisited his first full-length work of fiction in a Preface for this beautifully illustrated version.
H. G. Wells. The Time Machine. New York: Berkley, [1963?]. Wells 823 W46ti 1963
H. G. Wells. The Time Machine and The Man Who Could Work Miracles. London: Pan Books Ltd., 1953.
H. G. Wells. Mashina vremeni. Translated by E. K. Pimenova, edited by Evgenii Ivanovich Zamiatin. Saint Petersburg: “Vsemirnaia lit-ra” pri Gos. Izd., 1920.This copy of the Russian translation is inscribed to Wells from dissident and great science fiction writer Evgenii Zamiatin, who was much influenced by Wells.
H. G. Wells. Die Zeitmaschine. (Illustrierte Klassiker, no. 46) [Aachen: Bildschriftenverlag, 196-].
H. G. Wells. La machine à explorer le temps. Translated by Henry-D. Davray, illustrated by Max Camis. Paris: R. Kieffer, [1927].
H. G. Wells. Stroj času: Neviditelný. Translated by Pavla Moudrá. Prague: J. Otty, 1905.
