![]() ![]() ![]() So that any person with an ear and knowledge of letters, after about six lines, says ‘Wells,’ and is right every time. Yet he cannot keep out of his work that secret rhythm which its sentences (bare of relative clauses, and dependants, and adjectives, and participles) hold somewhere in their structure. Indeed, he spares little admiration for pure writing, which he thinks a fad of emasculate amateurs. This role of politician and sociologist he imposes upon the primal artist. He preaches and argues and attacks, has theories and practical programmes, tries to get something done. In his mature novels we cannot see the writer for the dust of his manly activities. This sudden bulk of tales seems a chance to distinguish the profile of H. His writings let us into so many workshops and laboratories that we would like to see his own. His drafts would tell us if this huge production is due to industry or to a happy fluency. Besides this decent life-output for a short-story writer Wells has the achievement of his massive History, and a shelf of novels, and miscellaneous prose-work, literary or political. My memory vaguely suggests to me others not here included. ![]() In this collection are sixty-three stories, none negligible, some very long. It is nearly as difficult to see how Wells did it. Probably they are renumbered stereos of another edition, otherwise Messrs Benn could hardly have done it. One thousand one hundred and fifty pages of H. ![]()
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