At the close of the eighteenth century, Erasmus Darwin declared that he would 'enlist the imagination under the banner of science', beginning, Michael Page argues, a literary narrative on questions of evolution, ecology, and technological progress that would extend from the Romantic through the Vict[...]
"No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own. . ." So begins The War of the Worlds, the novel that made Wells famous and has enthralled and terrified for a[...]
A lesser-known novel of social satire from the author of "The War of the Worlds"Mr. Polly is an ordinary middle-aged man who is tired of his wife's nagging and his dreary job as a gentleman's outfitter in a small town. Faced with the threat of bankruptcy, he concludes that the only way to escape his[...]
A mysterious stranger arrives at a quiet country inn at night. He is fully clothed, with even his face swathed in bandages. With the arrival of this stranger, bizarre incidents start happening in the neighbourhood - doors open and close on their own, voices are heard but no one is seen - a case of v[...]