The Invisible Man: A Grotesque Romance: A Critical Text of the 1897 New York First Edition, with an Introduction and Appendices - Paperback

by H. G. Wells (Author)

H.G. Wells barely revised The Invisible Man once it was published, adding only an epilogue. But the opening statement of that epilogue--"So ends the strange and evil experiment of the Invisible Man"--has posed challenges to scholars. How to understand it? Does it speak strictly to the scientific elements of the novel? Or is it a part of the work's political underpinnings? The 1897 New York first edition (the first edition to incorporate the epilogue) is used here as the basis for the exhaustive annotations and other critical apparatus of the world's foremost Wellsian scholar. The introduction examines in great detail the novel's position in the Wellsian canon and sets the major themes in context with the literary conventions used in his other works, particularly the scientific romances.

Author Biography

The late Leon Stover, professor emeritus at the Illinois Institute of Technology, was the first to bring science fiction to the college curriculum and was the author of numerous landmarks of intellectual history. He lived in Chicago.