The Invisible Man: A Grotesque Romance.

WELLS, H.G.

Item Number: 145002

London: C. Arthur Pearson Limited, 1897.

First edition, first issue of Wells’ popular cautionary tale of overreaching scientific ambition. Octavo, original publisher’s gilt and black-stamped pictorial red cloth. First issue with the first page numbered 2, the title page printed in orange and black and publisher’s ad leaf at rear. In very good condition. Housed in a custom half morocco slipcase.

Originally serialized in Pearson's Weekly in 1897, The Invisible Man was published as a novel the same year. The Invisible Man of the title is Griffin, a scientist who has devoted himself to research into optics and invents a way to change a body's refractive index to that of air so that it neither absorbs nor reflects light and thus becomes invisible. He successfully carries out this procedure on himself, but fails in his attempt to reverse it. Readers found The Invisible Man—unlike its immediate predecessor, The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896)—accessible and gripping. Joseph Conrad, in a December 1898 letter to Wells, praised the book: “Frankly—it is uncommonly fine. One can always see a lot in your work—there is always a ‘beyond’ to your books—but into this… you’ve managed to put an amazing quantity of effects.” The Invisible Man remains not only an inescapable influence on modern science fiction but also a “classic study of scientific hubris brought to destruction” (Clute & Nicholls, 1313).