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Wells was way above James in quality, prolific output and wide ranging genres, from sci-fi to history, fiction and social reform - his life story is worth studying carefully. His work even led towards the atomic bomb and statute of human rights.

Dream boldly and build responsibly - https://onepercentrule.substack.com/p/hg-wells-dream-boldly-...

I don't know that I would agree he is above James in "quality." Wells was of course great, but he also put out a lot of trash. James may have been the more limited of the two in tone, topic, and social politics, but his work is of a different caliber in terms of prose, complexity, and coherence.
Noted - like most writers his taste is not for everyone. There are a number of very detailed critiques of James, from his uncouthness to his "rangy, convoluted sentences that bear so unmistakably the hallmark of James".
> Wells was way above James in quality

In all of my twelve years on this godforsaken site, i had never had the displeasure of reading something more wrong; it actually transcends being wrong and, as Pauli would put it, it's not even wrong.

It's not even a pair of authors I'd have considered comparing in a "who's higher-quality" way. It's like comparing Spielberg and Aronofsky or something, as one being "way above" the other "in quality". I dunno, man... maybe? But I dunno. Pretty sure you can make it look like either one's way better than the other by picking your framing of "best", and in several different ways.
I may see it, but perhaps a more descriptive opinion of yours backed up with actual shades from your own viewpoint will provide a better trust with your comment. Sure, sometimes words cannot explain a thought, but effort may at least spread a few light rays on it supporting during discoveries. What do you think? Why do you, personally, disagree with someone's else opinion highlighting the whole 12 years of your experience of communication...
I get what you're doing but I don't find this a fair caricature of james' writing style
Feels LLM generated. Clever either way.
> In all of my twelve years on this godforsaken site, i had never had the displeasure of reading something more wrong

Perhaps you've simply forgotten the occasional comments that praise putting pineapple onto pizza?

No matter of literary opinion can plumb those same depths of evil most foul.

OK, you don't agree! But why?
In particular, his _Outline of History_ is well worth reading for its examination of how the commons (in terms of common pastural areas and so forth shared by a community) were eroded away by the newfangled notion of individual property.

It's on Project Gutenberge, and the Librivox recording may be workable depending on your tolerance for voices and background noise.

Though it's worth noting that the authorship of that text is challenged/potentially problematic --- look up Florence Deeks' copyright challenge.

He also wrote a fascinating biology textbook (“The Science of Life”, with two co-authors) and a book about the economy entitled “The Work, Wealth, and Happiness of Mankind”. His nonfiction work deserves as much attention as his fiction, it is excellent.
>eroded away by the newfangled notion of individual property

so, I haven't read it, but you can't be describing it right. What preceded individual property was "the king owns all of it, and he apportions it by favor to various earls"

It was more complicated than that, and people lived off the difference. The "king" cared about 'the big stuff', and cared little about low-value land that wouldn't produce reliable taxable yields. In particular, villages often had a commons area of land ill-suited for farming, which was used for grazing/as pasture, and the village council would allow the village people to let some of their animals graze there. During the industrial revolution in britain (or, leading up to it), these common areas were suddenly Elon Musked into private ownership and blocked off (enclosures), barring the poorer people from using them as earlier, to benefit some wealthy few. Variations of this happened across europe. I believe America also saw some conflicts between people wanting to use land area for cattle ('cowboys', or rather, the people above cowboys), and farmers, who did not want roaming cattle near their fields.
I have a copy of the Outline of History, now I will look for the Librivox recording. In his Autobiography he discusses Florence Deeks' copyright challenge. He was rather frustrated by the challenge. Apparently she made several claims against others too.
The general consensus of the literary establishment at least up to 20 years ago is that James was far greater than Wells, I believe that is still the accepted viewpoint, although some things I have heard and seen recently make me think that Wells may be getting re-evaluated, but still not above James I believe.

That said I happen to have a great deal of literary contempt for James and think he should be completely thrown away as a worthless piece of junk - which reasons I will not expound on here. Whereas I only ever found Wells sort of boring.

OK I found James boring too, but also a conceited punk of considerably lower quality than his own opinion and the critical establishment has given for an ability to write complicated sentences about inessential things (that was not expounding on my reasons, that was just a little snide aside)

> His [Wells'] novels are not social novels at all.

The science fiction novels for which Wells is best known form a small part of his fiction output, and are from early in his career. Most of his ca. 50 novels are "social", propagandistic and dull, and known mostly to literature professors.

As for Wells' non-fiction work, all I can say is don't confuse "opinionated" with "knowledgeable". Wells was a prolific writer but not a careful scholar. He was at one point failed out of college.

It's only fair to include James's response to Wells.

'It is art that makes life, makes interest, makes importance, for our consideration and application of those things, and I know of no substitute whatever for the force and beauty of the process.'

I haven't read enough of either author to have an opinion on their relative literary merit, but James is right about that, at the very least.

I’ve read a fair amount of both, and I think that James is definitely the superior prose stylist. Wells has an interest in social structures that informs a great deal of his plots (especially (The Time Machine). They’re in many ways incomparable if only because their literary projects have very different aims.
I bet that appreciating what they’re really talking about would require digging into a broader debate about the best approaches to, and attitude toward the writing of, good literature, which was a decades-long topic among a bunch of major figures in literature in the late 19th and early 20th century.

I mean, there are probably always such debates going on to some degree, but this is a specific one that saw James and some fellows on a side opposed to a bunch of other authors. I only know about it because I happen to have read part of a book of criticism of EM Forster earlier this year, and I gather that debate was kinda the major topic among that set for a long while (Forster was on the opposite side of it from James)

In case people are interested, the Wells novel referenced in the piece, _Boon_, is available on Project Gutenberg: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/34962/34962-h/34962-h.htm#fo...

It includes a pretty amusing mockery of Henry James's style, which is very very very inwardly focused:

> The gist is that Mr. Blandish wants a house to live in and that he has an idea of the kind of house he wants. And the chapter, the long, unresting, progressing chapter, expands and expands; it never jumps you forward, it never lets you off, you can’t skip and you can’t escape, until there comes at last a culminating distension of statement in which you realize more and more clearly, until you realize it with the unforgettable certainty of a thing long fought for and won at last, that Mr. Blandish has actually come upon the house and with a vigour of decision as vivid as a flash of lightning in a wilderness of troubled clouds, as vivid indeed as the loud, sonorous bursting of a long blown bladder, has said ‘This is it!’ On that ‘This is it’ my chapter ends, with an effect of enormous relief, with something of the beautiful serenity that follows a difficult parturition.

> “The story is born.

> “And then we leap forward to possession.

> “‘And here he was, in the warmest reality, in the very heart of the materialization of his dream——’ He has, in fact, got the house. For a year or so from its first accidental discovery he had done nothing but just covet the house; too fearful of an overwhelming disappointment even to make a definite inquiry as to its accessibility. But he has, you will gather, taken apartments in the neighbourhood, thither he visits frequently, and almost every day when he walks abroad the coveted house draws him. It is in a little seaside place on the east coast, and the only available walks are along the shore or inland across the golf-links. Either path offers tempting digressions towards it. He comes to know it from a hundred aspects and under a thousand conditions of light and atmosphere….

Henry James's _The Golden Bowl_ and a few other of his late novels are kind of a miracle of art, as in it's miraculous that they exist and nothing else really resembles them outside of maybe Proust!

James is a master, there is no doubt. But I'm convinced to now check out Wells who I somehow haven't read anything of!
If you just want to dip in then I can heartily recommend Wells’ short stories, of which he wrote a bunch. Standard Ebooks has a nice edition for free: https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/h-g-wells/short-fiction
Super, thank you
Absolutely everyone should read "The Time Machine." If you prefer, then an unabridged audiobook is great, I recommend putting in the effort to find a reading by Simon Vance. (It isn't a long book.) The first paragraph of The Time Machine, is one of the best introductory paragraphs ever written (in my opinion, obviously.) One relishes the imagery it reveals, as you read it, like a great main course of a fine meal - with delight, flavour and a promise of more.
"The first paragraph of The Time Machine, is one of the best introductory paragraphs ever written (in my opinion, obviously.) One relishes the imagery it reveals, as you read it, like a great main course of a fine meal - with delight, flavour and a promise of more."

Beautifully put - I will look for Vance's reading

Huh, I found "The Time Machine" disappointingly boring and hard to believe (I mean, it's sci-fi, and old sci-fi at that, so I was quite prepared to suspend some disbelief, but within the setting and the premises I remember I found the actions and thoughts of the characters unlikely)
Definitely do Time Machine first, then his other "classics for a reason" the War of the Worlds, the Invisible Man, the Island of Dr Moreau, and IMO the Food of the Gods. His work tends to have a sort of bipartite structure where the second half diverges quite a bit from the first or there is a major thematic shift partway, usually as a consequence of "committing to the bit." Sometimes it seems like he has lost the plot, other times that he has found it. But the books are extremely readable.
'Kipps', is the novel H G Wells, reportedly considered the most favourite amongst his works.
Interesting. Rexroth to his credit wasn't a terrible poet.
And it seems, a snob of some standing himself!
> Everybody knows the famous remark by Wells ...

Oh, yes, of course, of course. <slowly slides away and looks for a corner to stand in>

In a 1958 collected correspondence between two famous authors, "everyone" has a very specific connotation! "Everyone likely to have picked up this book"
I know, it just reminded me that I should know more about Henry James than I do.
So someone else besides Trump uses everyone to that extent? While technically not incorrect, every one vs everyone, changes the meaning drastically.