H.G.: The History of Mr. Wells

English novelist, social thinker and historian Herbert George Wells (1866-1946) believed in free love and practiced what he preached. His extramarital affairs with Cambridge student Amber Reeves and with novelist Rebecca West yielded an illegitimate daughter and son, respectively. Foot examines how the independent-minded heroines of Wells's novels embodied his libertarian ideas. A literary biographer and former leader of Britain's Labour Party, Foot, who befriended Wells in his youth, calls the author of The Time Machine and campaigner for the League of Nations the boldest prophet of the century because he foretold that nation-states, unless restrained by a world government, would plunge humanity into catastrophe. Wells saw Britain as an oligarchy that condemned a great mass of the population to dire poverty. His brand of socialism, Foot maintains, was tempered by his belief in the freethinking democratic liberal world as a bulwark against imperialism and divisive nationalism. This is an often provocative reassessment of Wells's life and ideas. Photos. (Nov.)