HG Wells

Vcitorian writer Herbert George Wells is best-known for his science fiction novels such as 'The Time Machine', 'The Fisrt Men on the Moon' and 'The War of the Worlds', though in his lifetime he was also a respected social commentator and non-fiction writer with a socialist political bent. Wells came to writing relatively late in life, though he was always an avid reader. He failed as a draper's assistant, a chemist's assistant and as a teacher (where he briefly had A.A. Milne as a student), until he won a scholarship to the Normal School of Science - a placement that would serve him well in his later profession - and there he studied under the tutelage of Aldous Huxley's grandfather! A man with an insatiable curiosity about the future, he has been dubbed, alongside Jules Verne, as the Father of Science Fiction. "Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race." - H.G. Wells