The first wellsians: A Modern Utopia and its early disciples

English Literature in Transition, 1880-1920

Volumn 54, Issue 4, 2011, Pages 444-469

  Crossley, Robert ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS BOSTON   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 80052120050     PISSN: 00138339     EISSN: 15592715     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (60)

1. Maurice Browne to Arthur Davison Ficke, 6 July 1905 (Ellen Van Volkenburg-Maurice Browne Papers, Special Collections Library, University of Michigan). Compare his letter to Harold Monro, written on the same day and also in the Michigan Archives.
2. The Utopians. Rules [1906-1908], 3 (H. G. Wells Archive, University of Illinois Library).
3. J. H. Skilton to H. G. Wells, 29 September 1906 (H. G. Wells Archive, University of Illinois Library).
4. H. G. Wells, Experiment in Autobiography (New York: Macmillan, 1934), 564, 565.
5. H. G. Wells, Mankind in the Making (New York: Scribner's, 1904), 367.
6. H. G. Wells, A Modern Utopia (1905), Gregory Claeys and Patrick Parrinder, eds. (London: Penguin, 2005), 174.
7. Maurice Browne, Too Late to Lament: An Autobiography (London: Gollancz, 1955), 57.
8. Harold Monro notebook, May 1906 (Harold Monro Papers, Box 6, Folder Q, Charles Young Library, Special Collections, UCLA).
9. Wells, A Modern Utopia, 174.
10. Harold Monro notebook, October 1906 (Monro Papers, Young Library, UCLA).
11. Harold Monro to Maurice Browne, 6 December 1906 (Ellen Van Volkenburg-Maurice Browne Papers, Special Collections Library, University of Michigan).
12. Maurice Browne to H. G. Wells, 26 December 1906 (H. G. Wells Archive, University of Illinois Library). See the age requirement for the Samurai in Wells, A Modern Utopia, 187.
13. David C. Smith, H. G. Wells, Desperately Mortal (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986), 101.
14. Several of the earliest letters of Amber Reeves to Wells, most on the stationery of Newnham College, Cambridge, are focused on the formation of The Utopians and her successful campaign to interest Wells in the organization. Although there are no dates on most of these letters they are con jecturally dated to 1905 and 1906. For the first extensive treatment of the affair with Amber Reeves, based on correspondence sealed to previous biographers, see Michael Sherborne, H. G. Wells: Another Kind of Life (London: Peter Owen, 2010), esp. 189-95, 205-11.
15. Amber Reeves to H. G. Wells, undated (H. G. Wells Archive, University of Illinois Library).
16. H. G. Wells in Love, G. P. Wells, ed. (Boston: Little, Brown, 1984), 73.
17. The Utopians. Rules [1906-1908], 7 (H. G. Wells Archive, University of Illinois Library).
18. See Dominic Hibberd, Harold Monro: Poet of the New Age (Hampshire: Palgrave, 2001), 29-56.
19. A very full account of Wells's fight for control of the Fabian Society is in the MacKenzies' H. G. Wells, 184-235.
20. See also Smith, H. G. Wells, Desperately Mortal, 102-16;
21. Sherborne, H. G. Wells: Another Kind of Life, 170-85.
22. H. G. Wells to Miss Franklin, c. mid-September 1906, Letter 653, The Correspondence of H. G. Wells, David C. Smith, ed. (London: Pickering and Chatto, 1998), II: 128.
23. Fabian News, 16.2 (November 1906), 52. It was a busy season of sponsorship for the Wellses; the October 1906 issue of Fabian News (44) lists them as proposers for Amber Reeves's candidacy for the Society.
24. J. H. Skilton to Harold Monroe [sic], 20 April 1907 (Monro Papers, UCLA Library). Skilton's misspelling of Monro's name suggests that this may be his first contact with him.
25. The letter includes Monro's transcript of a sonnet by Skilton titled "The Superman." In Harold Monro: Poet of the New Age
26. Hibberd observes, "The other Samurai thought Skilton was excessively lower-middle-class" (49).
27. Typescript, "Prospectus of the Samurai Press 1907" (H. G. Wells Archive, University of Illinois Library). The prospectus quotes from A Modern Utopia, 363.
28. Maurice Browne and Harold Monro, Proposals for a Voluntary Nobility (Norwich: Samurai Press, 1907), 9.
29. Maurice Browne to H. G. Wells, 21 January 1907 (H. G. Wells Archive, University of Illinois Library).
30. Proposals for a Voluntary Nobility, 8.
31. Maurice Browne to Arthur Davison Ficke, 5 February 1907 (Ellen Van Volkenburg-Maurice Browne Papers, Special Collections Library, University of Michigan).
32. H. G. Wells to Maurice Browne, 3 January 1907 (Ellen Van Volkenburg-Maurice Browne Papers, Special Collections Library, University of Michigan).
33. This is a typed excerpt made by Browne from the letter. In the mid-1920s, when he needed money, Browne sold all his original letters from Wells. The text of this excerpt appears in The Correspondence of H. G. Wells, II: 151, but the recipient is misidentified as Lewis Browne and the date is given incorrectly as June 3.07.
34. Ficke's father, a German immigrant, is said to have been the richest man in eastern Iowa. See William H. Roba, "Twins in My Cradle: Arthur Davison Ficke, Iowa Poet," Books at Iowa, 39 (November 1983), 48.
35. Arthur Davison Ficke to Chance J. Hambleton, 24 March 1907 (Ficke Papers, Newberry Library, Chicago).
36. Maurice Browne to Harold Monro, 24 February and 15 March 1907 (Ellen Van Volkenburg-Maurice Browne Papers, Special Collections Library, University of Michigan).
37. Harold Monro to Maurice Browne, 24 February 1907 (Ellen Van Volkenburg-Maurice Browne Papers, Special Collections Library, University of Michigan).
38. W. F. Vernon to Harold Monro, 23 April and 5 May 1907 (Monro Papers, UCLA Library).
39. "First Public Conference on Mr. H. G. Wells' 'Samurai,'" The New Age, 1 (2 May 1907), 9-11. The issue contained a half-page advertisement for the first several titles from the newly inaugurated Samurai Press.
40. Maurice Browne to Maurice Browne, dated simply Sunday 07;
41. Browne, Too Late to Lament, 86.
42. Browne's Job: A Dramatic Poem had been privately published in 1906.
43. H. G. Wells to Maurice Browne, 30 April 1907, Letter 684, The Correspondence of H. G. Wells, II: 148. Again, the editor has misidentified Maurice Browne as Lewis Browne.
44. H. G. Wells, "Credo" (Monro Papers, UCLA Library).
45. A copy of Wells's creed, with handwritten corrections, is also among the papers in the Browne Archive at Michigan and the Wells Archive, University of Illinois Library. A transcript, with minor errors, appears in The Correspondence of H. G. Wells, II: 198-99.
46. J. H. Skilton, "Comments" (Monro Papers, UCLA Library).
47. Maurice Browne, "Comments on Samurai Creeds," late 1907 (Monro Papers, UCLA Library). There is also a typescript in the Browne Archive at Michigan.
48. A. Romney Green, "General Remarks" from "Comments on Creeds" (Ellen Van Volkenburg-Maurice Browne Papers, Special Collections Library, University of Michigan).
49. "Comments on Samurai Creeds" (Monro Papers, UCLA Library). There are two versions of Skilton's creed in the UCLA collection and I have drawn on both, but all quotations are from the revised and expanded second version. Monro's and Browne's critiques were typed by Skilton from handwritten submissions.
50. J. H. Skilton to Harold Monro, 1 October 1907 (Monro Papers, UCLA Library).
51. Harold Murray, note dated 24 November 1907 (Ellen Van Volkenburg-Maurice Browne Papers, Special Collections Library, University of Michigan).
52. H. G. Wells to Harold Monro, undated [late 1907] (Monro Papers, UCLA Library).
53. J. H. Skilton to H. G. Wells, 22 January 1908 (H. G. Wells Archive, University of Illinois Library).
54. H. G. Wells to Harold Monro, 8 February 1908 (Wells Collection, Howard Gottlieb Archival Research Center, Boston University).
55. Strangely, the words quoted in this essay are attributed in Smith, Letter 605, to a letter from Wells to Victor Fisher, 29 November 1905, II: 88. Here as elsewhere in Smith's edition Skilton's name is mistranscribed as Shelton.
56. From Wells's copy of the 8-page typescript, without heading, on The Lesser Rule, signed by J. H. Skilton and supplemented by a 2-page typescript dated February, 1908 (H. G. Wells Archive, University of Illinois Library).
57. Maurice Browne to Arthur Davison Ficke, 17 April and 24 December 1909 (Ellen Van Volken-burg-Maurice Browne Papers, Special Collections Library, University of Michigan).
58. Maurice Browne, "Notes preceding the Creeds," section dated 3 June 1918 (Ellen Van Volken-burg-Maurice Browne Papers, Special Collections Library, University of Michigan).
59. See John Hammond, The H. G. Wells Society: The First Forty Years, 1960-2000: A Short History (London: H. G. Wells Society, 2000).
60. Maurice Browne, "Notes preceding the Creeds," section dated 1933 (Ellen Van Volkenburg-Maurice Browne Papers, Special Collections Library, University of Michigan).