Select Conversations with an Uncle

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Select Conversations with an Uncle
Essays
PublisherJohn Lane
Publication date
1895
Pages117
Preceded byHonors Physiography 
Followed byThe Time Machine: An Invention 

Select Conversations with an Uncle, published in 1895, was H. G. Wells's first literary publication in book form.[1] It consists of reports of twelve conversations between a fictional witty uncle[2] who has returned to London from South Africa with "a certain affluence," as well as two other conversations (one on aestheticism that takes place in a train, titled "A Misunderstood Artist," and another on physiognomy, titled "The Man with a Nose").

Themes

The principal themes of the conversations between a Wells-like character named "George" and his uncle are

taste in art and music, the state of being engaged, the agony of having to listen to a near neighbor playing the piano, tricycles, social novels, and the effects of marriage
.

Contents

These are the short stories contained in this collection showing the periodicals in which they were first published.

  • "Of Conversation and The Anatomy of Fashion"
  • "The Theory of The Perpetual Discomfort of Humanity"
  • "The Use of Ideals"
  • "The Art of Being Photographed"
  • "Bagshot's Mural Decorations"
  • "On Social Music"
  • "The Joys of Being Engaged"
  • "La Belle Dame Sans Merci"
  • "On a Tricycle"
  • "An Unsuspected Masterpiece"
  • "The Great Change"
  • "The Pains of Marriage"
  • "A Misunderstood Artist" (Pall Mall Gazette, 29 October 1894)
  • "The Man With a Nose" (Pall Mall Gazette, 6 February 1894)

Publication

Select Conversations with an Uncle was published in a limited edition by John Lane in a series called "The Mayfair Set" and in New York by Merriam. The volume was dedicated to "To my dearest and best friend, R.A.C.," which is a misprint either for

Pall Mall Gazette beginning in 1893.[4]

Reception

Wells's "uncle" character had been "very well received" in the Pall Mall Gazette,[5] but not all reviews of the volume were favorable. The Athenaeum panned it as "a dreary and foolish assemblage of commonplace ideas expressed in stilted phraseology."[6]

References

  1. ^ Select Conversations with an Uncle was preceded by two textbooks published in 1893: Text Book of Biology (Clive, 2 vols.) and (with R.A. Gregory) Honours Physiography (Hughes).
  2. ^ Based on Alfred Williams, who had been a teacher in the West Indies and whom Wells knew briefly when in 1880 he became briefly the head of a village school at Wookey, in Somerset, before his credentials were discovered to be fraudulent. Wells later said that Williams "gave me a new angle from which to regard the universe. I had not hitherto considered that it might be an essentially absurd affair, good only to laugh at." Norman and Jeanne Mackenzie, H.G. Wells: A Biography (Simon & Schuster, 1973), pp. 35, 105.
  3. ^ Michael Sherborne, H.G. Wells: Another Kind of Life (Peter Owen, 2010), p. 102.
  4. ^ Norman and Jeanne Mackenzie, H.G. Wells: A Biography (Simon & Schuster, 1973), pp. 95n., 105.
  5. ^ David C. Smith, H.G. Wells: Desperately Human: A Biography (Yale University Press, 1986), p. 36.
  6. ^ Michael Sherborne, H.G. Wells: Another Kind of Life (Peter Owen, 2010), p. 102.

External links

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