H. G. Wells
The Time Machine
1895 · 182 pages
- Author
- H. G. Wells
- Edition
- First British edition (subtitled “An Invention”)
- Published
- London, William Heinemann, 1895
- Pages
- 182
- File
- DjVu, 29.4 MB
- Text search
- yes
- Rights
- public domain
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About the book
The Time Machine is H. G. Wells’s first novel, published in 1895. It grew out of earlier sketches he had written on the idea of time travel, and it made his name almost overnight. It is the book that popularised the idea of a machine that carries its rider through time.
A Victorian inventor, known only as the Time Traveller, tells his dinner guests what he found in the year 802,701. Humanity has split into two species: the gentle, childlike Eloi who live in idleness above ground, and the Morlocks, pale creatures who toil in the dark below and come up at night to feed on them. When his machine disappears, the Traveller has to go down among the Morlocks to get it back, and he later travels on to the dying Earth millions of years ahead.
Behind the adventure lie Wells’s ideas about class, evolution and the future of the human race. The novel became one of the founding works of science fiction and has been adapted many times.
Contents
Tap a chapter to open the book there.
About this edition
The first British edition, published in London by William Heinemann in 1895, with the date given in Roman numerals on the title page. It is dedicated to William Ernest Henley, and a note before the text explains that parts had appeared in the National Observer in 1894 and the story itself in the New Review. The scan comes from a University of Illinois copy and includes the publisher’s advertisements; its text layer is of poor quality and searching may miss words.
How to read it
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Source
A scan from the Wikimedia Foundation's open projects. The book is in the public domain: free to read, download and share.