The Time Machine (Norton Critical Editions)

Intrigued by the possibilities of time travel as a student and inspired as a journalist by the great scientific advances of the Victorian Age, Wells drew on his own scientific publications'”on evolution, degeneration, species extinction, geologic time, and biology'”in writing The Time Machine . This Norton Critical Edition is based on the first London edition of the novel. It is accompanied by detailed explanatory annotations and 'œA Note on the Text.''œBackgrounds and Contexts' is organized thematically into four sections: 'œThe Evolution of The Time Machine ' presents alternative versions and installments and excerpts of the author's time-travel story; 'œWells's Scientific Journalism (1891'94)' focuses on the scientific topics central to the novel; 'œWells on The Time Machine ' reprints the prefaces to the 1924, 1931, and 1934 editions; and 'œScientific and Social Contexts' collects five widely read texts by the Victorian scientists and social critics Edwin Ray Lankester, Thomas Henry Huxley, Benjamin Kidd, William Thomson (Lord Kelvin), and Balfour Stewart and Peter Guthrie Tait.'œCriticism' includes three important early reviews of The Time Machine from the Spectator , the Daily Chronicle , and Pall Mall Magazine as well as eight critical essays that reflect our changing emphases in reading and appreciating this futuristic novel. Contributors include Yevgeny Zamyatin, Bernard Bergonzi, Kathryn Hume, Elaine Showalter, John Huntington, Paul A. Cantor and Peter Hufnagel, Colin Manlove, and Roger Luckhurst.A Chronology and Selected Bibliography are also included.Wells, H. G. is the author of 'The Time Machine (Norton Critical Editions)', published 2008 under ISBN 9780393927948 and ISBN 0393927946.