The Time Machine by H. G. Wells

ESC 27, 2001 seems odd for a scholarly edition to reproduce at some length the surviving publisher’s records and draft outlines of the es­ says but not to include complete bibliographical descriptions of the textual witnesses — and to relegate to the endnotes the descriptions (for the first and tenth editions) that do appear. Confidence in the accuracy of the edition, moreover, is partially undermined by the presence of typographical or factual errors: e.g., the total print run of 24,250 is listed as 22,250 (626); the 1970 reprint is dated 1971 (4); the number of missing quotation marks added to the edited text is said to be both five and six (xvi, xvii), etc. Such criticisms will perhaps seem mean-spirited, which is certainly contrary to the liberal spirit of the essays themselves — and indeed contrary to this reviewer’s intention. Shea and Whitla ’s labour has been formidable, and the result is an impressive and important work of cultural scholarship. Although the edi­ tors suggest that the significance of the Essays and Reviews con­ troversy has been obscured for today’s readers by the widespread acceptance o f the essayists’ ideas, what is fascinating about this Victorian debate is just how familiar it all sounds. At the heart of the current controversy within the Anglican Communion with respect to homosexuality lie the same questions about the inspi­ ration and interpretation of scripture; one hundred-and-fortyyears after the publication of Essays and Reviews, there remain many who would consider heretical Jowett’s insistence that the Bible be interpreted “like any other book.” PAMELA DALZIEL / U n iversity o f B ritish Colum bia H. G. Wells. The Time Machine. Ed. Nicholas Ruddick. Peter­ borough: Broadview Press, 2001. $9.95 paper. The paperback scholarly edition of a classic, intended primarily for the student but also hopefully of interest to academics, con­ stitutes a genre o f academic publication that is easy to do, but hard to do well. Here in Canada we have an independent pub­ lisher, Broadview Press, that specializes in this genre, and, in my opinion, does it better than anyone else. Broadview appears 230 REVIEWS at its very best in Nicholas Ruddick’s edition of H. G. Wells’s famous tale The Time Machine. The problem with this genre, evident in some of the more humdrum Norton Critical Editions, is that students do not nec­ essarily feel impelled to read the material in appendices at the end. And the literary criticism provided in Norton editions of­ ten seems rather old-fashioned. The material at the end may not partake of the narrative interest of the work being edited, nor be presented in a way that makes it seem coherent or neces­ sary in itself. Broadview has alleviated this problem by leaving out the criticism, concentrating instead on extracts from writ­ ing contemporary to the work that relate it to the culture of its period, and allowing the editor to provide a substantial intro­ duction that will point toward the concluding appendices and thus frame the text in a narrative that encourages the student to read beyond the text itself. Ruddick has done this with particular skill by providing a preface, which is both a lively read and a scholarly article, keyed to a well-organized set of appendices referenced in each section of the preface, so that the reader will know which appendix will best serve a particular interest. Like many Broadview editions, this one is readily accessible to undergraduates but would also be quite suitable for a graduate course. Ruddick notes that The Time Machine is one of the seminal works of its tim e— “that fascinating period at the end of the nineteenth century when Victorian optimism became clouded by modern anxieties” — and also a founding work of the genre that came to be known as science fiction (11). In a long but very readable introduction, Ruddick manages to touch as many bases as possible while developing some im­ portant insights into the structure and intent of the story. He provides a lively summary of Wells’s life up to the publication of The Time Machine that recounts his early struggles in...

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