A Short History of the World.

WELLS, H.G.

$9,800.00

Item Number: 124096

London: Cassell and Company, Ltd, 1922.

First edition of Wells’ classic work, which Albert Einstein recommended for the study of history as a means of interpreting progress in civilization. Octavo, original cloth, illustrated. Association copy, inscribed by H.G. Wells on the half-title page, “Maurice, from H.G. Nov. 1922.” The recipient, English man of letters Maurice Baring, enjoyed a period of success as a dramatist and began to write novels after serving in the Royal Airforce during World War I. He was widely known socially and associated with several aristocratic intellectual societies including the Cambridge Apostles, the Coterie, and the literary group associated with G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc in particular. His novels have come to be regarded as “…minor masterpieces in character study and social depiction. Limited as they are in subject and theme… they can be appreciated for the accuracy with which they reproduce the world of the late Victorian elite, for the purity and simplicity of their style, and for the sensitivity and erudition which they display” (Irvine, 34.8). His best-known works include With Russians in Manchuria (1905), Round the World in any Number of Days (1919), Passing By (1921), and The Puppet Show of Memory (1922). With Baring’s bookplate to the pastedown. In very good condition with rubbing to the crown of the spine. An exceptional association copy of Wells’ classic work; scarce signed and inscribed.

Of the more than one hundred books that H. G. Wells published in his lifetime, this is one of the most ambitious. Spanning the origins of the Earth to the outcome of World War I, A Short History of the World is an engrossing account of the evolution of life and the development of the human race. Wells brings his monumental learning and penetrating historical insight to bear on the Neolithic era, the rise of Judaism, the Golden Age of Athens, the life of Christ, the rise of Islam, the discovery of America, the Industrial Revolution, and a host of other subjects. Breathtaking in scope, this thought-provoking masterwork remains one of the most readable and rewarding of its kind.