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The Author. His father lived for centuries, the hundreds of runs that a professional cricketer must make to be well paid. Young Herbert George, soon after attending private school in Kent and taking honors in zoology at the Royal College of Science, set out to live for other centuries, of race development and of personal fame. He was and is a stocky little dynamo for energy, working 15 hours a day, holding serious thought sacred. At 29 he started publishing the threescore books whose titles now require nearly a column of fine Who's Who type. He invented time-machines, strange bacilli, invisibility, men in the moon, wars between worlds, Utopias. His immensely popular novels were never without strong social implications and to a host of readers he became an ethical guide as well as an interpreter of science. Mr. Britling Sees It Through was probably as great a patriotic contribution as Britain received from any individual during the War.
His home is in Essex and there, of a Sunday, has been played many a game of hockey (like the one in Mr. Britling), with "H. G." vociferous as captain and umpire. Invariably his merry eye and shrill, rapid accents govern the gathering at tea afterwards. Since the War his writing has been somewhat sobersided, tending toward the purely educational. Taxation has obliged him to dash off articles for U. S. magazines, notably the Cosmopolitan. But his vigor of mind and body are no whit abated. His son, Frank, a brisk youth in his twenties, who arrived in the U. S. last week to spend 10 days learning to be a cinema director, reported his sire as in the best of health and very busy elevating the level of British cinema by writing new scenarios.
* THE WORLD OF WILLIAM CLISSOLD—H. G. Wells—Doran (2 vols. $5). To be published in the U. S. Sept. 30.