WELLS, H.G.
The Wonderful Visit, The Sea Lady: A Tissue of Moonshine, Tono-Bungay.
London: J. M. Dent & Co., Aldine House; Methuen & Co.; Macmillan and Co., Limited , 1896-1922.
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Rare finely bound set including three presentation copies; each volume inscribed by H.G. Wells to fellow writer Mildred Dew Lawrence
Finely bound set comprised of three elaborately bound presentation copies, each volume inscribed by H.G. Wells to fellow writer Mildred Dew Lawrence. Duodecimo, three volumes uniformly bound in full pebbled calf by Bumpus with gilt titles and elaborate gilt tooling to the spine in six compartments within raised gilt bands, double gilt-ruling and fleuron cornerpieces to the front and rear panels, gilt turn-ins and inner dentelles stamp-signed by Bumpus, all edges gilt. The Wonderful Visit [London: J. M. Dent & Co., Aldine House, 1896] is a third edition. The Sea Lady: A Tissue of Moonshine [London: Methuen & Co., 1902] is a first edition. Tono-Bungay [Macmillan and Co., Limited, 1922] is a later printing. Each volume is a presentation copy, inscribed on the second free endpaper, "Mildred Dew Lawrence. H.G. Wells. warmest good wishes July 1924." The recipient, Mildred Dew Lawrence was an American author of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century fiction, remembered primarily for her contributions to popular Gothic and supernatural literature. Although she did not attain the canonical status of H. G. Wells, her work participated in the same broader transatlantic literary culture that sustained late Victorian and Edwardian speculative writing. Whereas Wells’s fiction—such as The Time Machine (1895) and The War of the Worlds (1898)—foregrounded scientific romance and evolutionary speculation as vehicles for social critique, Lawrence’s narratives more frequently engaged Gothic atmospherics, psychological tension, and domestic spaces as sites of unease. Both writers, however, explored the instability of modern subjectivity and the limits of empirical knowledge, albeit through different generic strategies: Wells through extrapolated science and futurity, and Lawrence through supernatural suggestion and affective suspense. In this sense, their works can be read as parallel responses to fin-de-siècle anxieties concerning progress, degeneration, and the epistemological uncertainties of modernity. In near fine condition.
H. G. Wells was a central figure in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century British literature, whose work significantly shaped the development of modern science fiction. Trained in biology under T. H. Huxley, Wells integrated contemporary scientific discourse—particularly evolutionary theory and speculative futurism—into narratives that interrogated social organization, imperial expansion, and technological progress. In works such as The Time Machine (1895), The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896), and The War of the Worlds (1898), he employed the form of the scientific romance to examine class division, ethical responsibility, and the fragility of human dominance. Although often celebrated for their imaginative scope, Wells’s novels were equally invested in social critique, using speculative scenarios to expose the contradictions and anxieties underlying late Victorian modernity.
The Wonderful Visit, The Sea Lady: A Tissue of Moonshine, Tono-Bungay.
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