By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘The Hammerpond Park Burglary’ is not one of the best-known short stories by H. G. Wells (1866-1946), but in my determination to read all of his short fiction I thought it worth recording my comments on this slight piece of fiction, even though it has no elements of fantasy or science fiction and is more like a Raffles adventure than a quintessential slice of H. G. Wells’s imaginative fiction.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
The words ‘child’ and ‘children’ have had an interesting history. Although we can all easily define ‘child’ now – a young person who had not yet attained adulthood – this definition in itself raises some intriguing questions. Legally, a ‘child’ may be someone under sixteen years of age, or someone under eighteen years of age, depending on the country or context; or some other marker or boundary between ‘childhood’ and ‘adulthood’ may be given.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
Of all of the short stories written by H. G. Wells (1866-1946), ‘In the Avu Observatory’ is one of the most genuinely frightening. In this story, Wells’s writing is sublime, and the way he slowly builds suspense as a mysterious monstrous creature attacks the scientist manning an observatory in Borneo serves as a masterclass in how to write a ‘monster tale’ such as this.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘Wants’ is a very short story by the American writer Grace Paley (1922-2007). First published in the Atlantic in 1972, it was the opening story in Paley’s 1974 collection, Enormous Changes at the Last Minute and remains one of her most popular and widely studied stories.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
The British author H. G. Wells (1866-1946) was a prolific writer of novels, scientific romances, and non-fiction. His late work All Aboard for Ararat, which was published in 1940 against the backdrop of world war, is not one of his most celebrated books, but it’s an interesting example of ‘late Wells’ and a fun update on the Noah story from the Old Testament.