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I constantly come back to the same 4 books from Wells as the best things I've ever read; The Time Machine, The Island of Doctor Moreau, The First Men in the Moon and of course War of the Worlds (which actually to be honest I very rarely read, but thats mostly because I've listened to the musical so many times that I anticipate the music kicking in too much and it distracts me)

I was talking about this the other day, people call Dune the grandfather of sci-fi. Dune is absolutely a massive influence on modern sci-fi and deserves the praise it gets, but I think father is a more apt title, with grandfather going to Wells. Dunes influence is largely stylistic, whereas Wells either helped to invent or in some cases entirely invented parts of sci-fi so ingrained in us that we forget that they would ever need inventing.

Lovecraft. If we are talking about the people who expanded the genre, who opened us to new ideas, Lovecraft is right in the middle. Wells opened up scifi to the idea of interplanetary conflict, Lovecraft opened scifi to the concept of deep time. Dune would not have been Dune without Lovecraft opening the door to interstellar conflict across deep time.
Lovecraft can be Grandmother, I haven't read a lot of his work but it seems to be very influential but in a very different way and almost in a different genre
What about the novels of his that are known more for their literary value?

Love and Mr Havisham, History of Polly, Kipps (which he himself might have considered his own favourite among his novels), Tono-Bungay?

They're not really for me, I'm aware of them but I'm just more interested in sci-fi