Henry Holt and Company, 1895
First US Edition, Blend of First and Second Issues A superb handsome unrestored copy of this title with the requisite 1895 date on the title page. Mixed first and second issue with H.G. Wells misspelled on the “Authors Note” as “H.S.W.” page but corrected on the title page. The American edition preceded the English Edition. Wells’ groundbreaking “scientific romance”- a work generally credited with the popularization of the concept of time travel by using a vehicle that allows an operator to travel purposely and selectively forwards or backwards in time
Original decorated tan cloth, stamped in purple. Untrimmed pages with gilt top stain. The book is in beautiful condition with a tight and square binding. Original tissue guard present. The original cloth is in clean condition with only very slight rubbing, and with darkening/sunning to the spine cloth. The internal pages are clean, crisp, bright and flat, with no foxing, no handling marks, no stains, and no bent pages. The end papers are clean with one delicate scripted owner name, otherwise no bookplates, no inscriptions, and no bookstore stamps. Far nicer than usually found. Please see the many detailed images.
In 1894 Wells “began writing what he called ‘single sitting stories’ using his special knowledge of science, culminating in the publication of his novella The Time Machine in 1895. It was an immediate success” (Gunn, From Gilgamesh to Wells, 337). Its earliest readers grasped its significance: as one contemporary review states, “So far as our knowledge goes [Wells] has produced that rarity which Solomon declared to be not merely rare but non-existent–a ‘new thing under the sun'” (Bergonzi, 41). Important not only for establishing Wells as a popular author but also for making a “crucial breakthrough in narrative technology, providing science fiction with one of its most significant facilitating devices” (Clute & Nicholls, 1227), “it is the most important foundation stone of British scientific romance and the science fiction genre in general” (Anatomy of Wonder II-1232). Indeed, “once it was published it was modified and changed the English and American fiction forever. Wells had produced a significant and seminal work. a masterful marriage of the fictive art and theoretical science” (Smith, 46, 50).
