HERBERT GEORGE WELLS

Nothing is so attractively inviting as the quest for the unknown. Man, having conquered the space dimensions of the earth and beyond, is longing for mastery over Time, the most complicated, mysterious and dangerous notion in human experience. To look into the future and see the present as if a wiser and more expert human was, probably, one of the most outstanding achievements of Herbert George Wells.

The English novelist, journalist, sociologist, and historian, Herbert George Wells (Sept. 21, 1866, Bromley, Kent — Aug. 13, 1946, London) was the son of domestic servants, and later small shopkeepers. After an insufficient education, in near poverty, but with a great love of reading, 14-year-old Wells was sent as a trainee to a cloth shopkeeper in Windsor. After dismissal, he became an assistant to a chemist, and in 1883 an attendant at Midhurst Grammar School. At age 18, he won a scholarship and studied biology at the Royal College of Science, London, and among his teachers was T.H. Huxley. On graduating from London University in 1888, he became a science teacher and, at the same time, began his long period of both health and financial troubles. Wells' marriage to his cousin, Isabel Mary Wells, in 1891, added to the difficulty, and in 1894 he ran off with Amy Catherine Robbins, his former pupil and second wife.

Wells' first novel, The Time Machine (1895), started a whole range of science-fiction prose, including The Wonderful Visit (1895), The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896), The Invisible Man (1897), The War of the Worlds (1898), The First Men in the Moon (1901), and The Food of the Gods (1904). He also produced many short stories, which were collected in The Stolen Bacillus (1895), The Plattner Story (1897) and Tales of Space and Time (1899).

After such an outburst of science fiction, at the turn of the century he undertook comic novels about the middle-class, such as Love and Mr. Lewisham (1900), Kipps: The Story of a Simple Soul (1905), Tono Bungay (1909), Ann Veronica (1909), and The History of Mr. Polly (1910). He based them on his own memories and with deep sympathy showed the ambitions and disappointments of shopkeepers, underpaid teachers, and clerks. The beginning of the 20^th century also introduced a note of pessimism in his long-term views on the human condition.

His creative evolution brought out two trends in his writing; from 1906 onward Wells-novelist and Wells-pamphleteer were competing. Only the novels The History of Mr. Polly and Bealby (1915) could be regarded as fiction. Mostly he used the genre of a novel to discuss social and political issues like Boon (1915) or Mr. Britling Sees It Through (1916). There are other novels, in which he discussed the relationship between men and women, such as Joan and Peter (1918), Marriage (1912) and The Passionate Friends (1913).

World War I broke up even his remaining belief in short-term progress, and in his next works he changed his idea of social evolution saying that knowledge and education were the criteria of progress. Working in this direction Wells turned his inexhaustable energy to popular education, producing The Outline of History (1920), The Science of Life (1931) and The Work, Wealth, and Happiness of Mankind (1932). He still published fiction but his gift of dialogue and narrative were completely overtaken by his polemics. Sometimes he showed his sense of humour, as in Experiment in Autobiography (1934).

Aging and ill, Wells completely lost his faith in a better future as the Second World War broke out. His novel Mind at the End of its Tether (1945) presents a depressing image of a world in which nature eventually destroys mankind.

The World Set Free

In this book Wells tells of the effect of energy and technological advance as determining forces of human progress. He traces man's historical advance from the most primitive state to the end of countries and the beginning of the world state. It all could happen due to the development of scientific knowledge. Another question of the book is whether an outbreak of peaceful creativity in mankind would save the world.

VIRGINIA WOOLF

Virginia Woolf (Jan. 25, 1882, London — March 28, 1941, near Rodmell, Sussex) was the daughter of a Victorian critic, philosopher, biographer, and scholar Leslie Stephen. She was brought up in a large family where she could read in her father's impressive library, and get in touch with many well-known Victorians. In 1904, when her father died, she moved to Bloomsbury, the district in London which became the centre of the whole literary school: Lytton Strachey, a biographer; J. M. Keynes, an economist; Roger Fry, an art critic; and the novelist E. M. Forster.

In 1912, she married the journalist and essayist Leonard Woolf, supportive emotionally and intellectually in all her creative and personal troubles. Together they established the Hogarth Press in 1917 that published, among others, Eliot's Poems (1919) and Homage to John Dryden (1924), the English translations of Freud, and Woolf's own writings. After her novels The Voyage Out (1915) and Night and Day (1919), she started experimenting to emphasize the wholeness of experience, the complexity of one's character and external world, and their influence on the soul.

The fear of Word War II and the fear of losing her mind and remaining an invalid pressed heavily on her, and finally she committed suicide. Few friends suspected that under her liveliness and wit lay a grave nervous depression and psychological anxiety.

As a writer, she developed naturally in her rich cultural world, which surrounded her from childhood. In her best novels, like Jacob's Room (1922), Mrs. Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927), The Waves (1931) and Between the Acts (1941), Woolf inventively combined the stream of consciousness technique, lyric imagery and her highly poetic language in her concern about personal identity and the role of time and memory in our lives.

Woolf was also preoccupied with the social status of women, especially of women writers in the man-dominated world, writing several essay collections, such as A Room of One's Own (1929) and Three Guineas (1938). She also produced innumerable reviews and critical essays, published under the title The Common Reader (1925) and The Second Common Reader (1932). Her criticism is subtle and spontaneous, informal and personal, evocative rather than commanding.

JAMES JOYCE

James Joyce (Feb. 2, 1882, Dublin, Ireland — Jan. 13, 1941, Zurich, Switzerland) was raised in a Catholic atmosphere; he attended Clongowes Wood College, then Belvedere College, Dublin. He was well on the way to becoming a priest, since both were Jesuit institutions, as well as University College, Dublin, where he studied modern languages.

He was much fond of Henrik Ibsen, and learned Norwegian to read his plays in the original and wrote an article, Ibsen's New Drama, published in the London Fortnightly Review in 1900 at the age of just 18. It was very successful and Joyce firmly decided to become a writer. In 1901, he published an essay, The Day of the Rabblement, attacking the Irish Literary Theatre for its catering to popular taste. Refused publication, the essay was printed privately, thus angering the university authorities. By his graduation in 1902, he knew he would have to leave Ireland. Meanwhile, he decided to become a doctor, but, after attending a few lectures in Dublin he gave it up, borrowed some money and went to Paris. He wrote some book reviews and studied in the Sainte-Genevieve Library.

Shortly afterwards, he was called back home since his mother was seriously ill. He tried various occupations, briefly worked as a schoolteacher, and began writing a long naturalistic novel, Stephen Hero, when in 1904, he was invited to submit some short stories with an Irish background to a farmers' magazine, The Irish Homestead. On June 16, 1904, he met an uneducated peasant girl Nora Barnacle and fell in love with her. They moved to the Continent to teach English first at Trieste, where their two children were born, and then from 1915 at Zurich.

Joyce suffered from poor eyesight and from 1917 until 1930 endured a series of 25 operations, sometimes unable to see at all. Notwithstanding the problems, he continued working. Moreover, some of his funniest passages were written when his health was in decline. From 1920 to 1940, Joyce lived in Paris, until forced to flee to Switzerland when the War started.

Personally, Joyce was a difficult man to get along with. Nevertheless, for 36 years on the Continent he was the centre of a literary circle. His friends helped him, both spiritually and financially, among them the New York lawyer and art patron John Quinn, the English feminist and editor Harriet Shaw Weaver.

Although abroad, Joyce always wrote about Dublin alone, so that it became his little universe of all human history. In fact, he launched his literary career from realistic stories about various sides of Dublin life, collected in the 1914 edition as Dubliners. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), having many autobiographical elements, tells of the interconnections between the artist and society in the modern world.

With his life and career, Joyce exemplifies the inevitable estrangement of the artist from society in 20^th century Western civilization. These themes are raised in his masterpieces Ulysses (1922) and Finnegans Wake (1939), unique novels in organization and style. Ulysses is built similar to Homer's Odyssey. The novel covers one day in the lives of Stephen Dedalus, Leopold Bloom and his wife Molly Bloom, parallel to Telemachus, Ulysses and Penelope, as well as the central events of the journey home. For the depth of its portrayal and humour the novel stands out in all the literary output of the 20^th century. It is also a pioneering work in the use of interior monologue, known as the stream of consciousness.

James Joyce is famous for his experimental use of language, for the exploration in new literary techniques. His subtle depiction of human nature made him one of the most influential novelists of 20^th century Modernism.

Araby

Araby is one of the fifteen short stories of Joyce's collection, Dubliners, which together trace the development of a child into an adult. The point of view in every third story changes from a young boy's to that of a teenager's. Araby is the last story of the first group and borrows its title from a festival in Dublin. The boy, who narrates the story, lives with his aunt and uncle, and remains unnamed.

Date: 2015-12-17; view: 977