More remarkably many of his most successful novels were science fiction, a genre not normally associated with popular commercial fiction. Wells looked into the future and saw television, aerial warfare, nuclear energy and battle tanks and much else besides.
He wrote more than 100 books, turned his hand to journalism, politics - especially Fabianism - had a hand in literary politics, and knew everyone in the books business, but always remained just outside Edwardian society, kept at arm's length because no-one's daughter was reputedly safe from his amorous clutches.
Wells was certainly a serial adulterer and this is a leading theme of David Lodge's biographical novel: which is to say Lodge takes the facts and elasticizes them with invented conversations and interior dialogues.
Is it a better version of the truth than the truth?
So many books have been written about Wells - and also those monumental sexual proclivities - that it's hard to be convinced the fictionalized version adds much that we want to know. Readers new to Wells might feel differently.
Wells practised what he preached.
One of his willing victims was Amber Reeves, none other than the clever daughter of that snooty colonial, New Zealand's representative in London, William Pember Reeves. Better known by far was another willing servant to Wells' lust, Rebecca West.
There were others, many, many others, including several names almost as famous as his own.
In each case, Hodge tells us, the women more or less flung themselves at Wells. I can't imagine what the attraction was. Wells had a short, unprepossessing appearance, was born into trade and started poor, and had a high squeak of a voice. He certainly had an abundance of energy and a very fertile mind - he must have been fascinating company - and Hodge hints at the scale of another physical manifestation over which I must draw a veil in a family newspaper. Perhaps he just had a mesmerizing personality.
Throughout it all his second wife, Jane (surely the heroine of this story) condoned his behaviour, even on occasion approved of it and helpfully harboured his mistresses on certain distressing occasions. The liaisons were usually brief, though a couple were as long as a decade or so, and there were at least two full-term pregnancies.
A Man of Parts is rich in detail, and very well-written by a distinguished writer, although I did not find it an especially gripping narrative possibly because there are not many stones in Wells' life that have been left unturned. That, I fear, is one of the chief perils of "faction".
- Bryan James is the Books Editor.
