Wells, Catherine [2]

Entry updated 14 April 2025. Tagged: Author.

(1872-1927) UK author, married to H G Wells from 1895 until her death. Her fiction was occasional, usually fantasy or supernatural; what seems to be a sophisticated indifference to generic boundaries (see Equipoise) marks her short work, as assembled in The Book of Catherine Wells (coll 1928), edited by H G Wells. An awareness of this insouciance is certainly essential to any reading of her most extensive tale, "The Open Heart" in The Open Heart: Stories and Fiction (coll 2025), whose female protagonist, a young illustrator en route to New Zealand to fulfil a commission, is shipwrecked alone on a mysterious Island; its unearthly peacefulness, and the beauty of the small palace she settles into, and the peaceable wildlife, lead her to think she may have Timeslipped into a Utopian future. Her narrative (left in manuscript) may be incomplete; some suspicion that "The Open Heart" may have been intended to reveal itself as a Posthumous Fantasy [see The Encyclopedia of Fantasy under links below] cannot be confirmed, though it is telling that she does not seem to eat. Much of the text is taken up with an impassioned commentary on the cruelties Religion has imposed on Eros (see Sex), and on the degraded role women are forced to play (see Feminism), and on the barbarities of a transactional economic system (in a decent world, "Never is any thing one's own unless it is not for sale"). In hindsight she fits significantly into 1920s discourse. [JC]

Amy Catherine Wells

born London: 8 July 1872

died London: 6 October 1927

works

The Book of Catherine Wells (London: Chatto and Windus, 1928) [coll: edited with introduction by H G Wells: hb/]
The Open Heart: Stories and Fiction (London: Flame Tree Publishing, 2025) [coll: ed with an introduction by Emelyne Godfrey and Patrick Parrinder: contains re-sort of The Book of Catherine Wells above plus title novella and other matter: illus/hb/Broci]

links

previous versions of this entry

Internet Archive