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Dating Victorian forensic science
In my Victorian mysteries, the question of poison occasionally arises. Most Victorian poisoning stories use arsenic, because it was everywhere. Yes, it was in rat poison, but also in face lotion...
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Presentation for H. G. Wells Society
This morning I had the pleasure of presenting to the H. G. Wells Society for their conference “Experiments in (Auto)biography: H.G. Wells and Life-Writing”. I was asked to talk about the background to...
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Destroying history by post
This set of four 78 records was released in 1946. It survived McCarthyism, Elvis, the Vietnam War, the Reagan years, grunge, 9/11, and the election of a complete moron to the presidency, but it could...
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NaNo and Lydia Greenwood
Why has it been so long since my last post? Well, I’ll tell you. I decided to participate in NaNoWriMo. For the blessedly uninitiated, NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month, and it’s always...
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An epiphany while working with Wells
One of my current projects is a chapter on H. G. Wells and education, which I’m writing for the Oxford Handbook on H. G. Wells. I have been struggling a bit with this. Each chapter of these Handbooks...
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A late night with Mr. Wells
Or, rather, a late night with Mr. Kaempffert, a name that Wells would just love. And this man loved Wells. But he was very hard to find. It began after midnight with an article I found that I wanted to...
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Wells’ Pocket History of the World
I came across (and purchased immediately) a Wells book I hadn’t seen before: his Pocket History of the World. It was published in 1941, so two years after the war had begun and five years before Wells...
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Sad news from Midhurst
Simon Wheeler of Wheeler’s Bookshop in Midhurst, West Sussex, reported to me this morning on a North Street fire, which has consumed much of the 400-year-old Angel Inn and nearby buildings. My photo...
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Mr. Wells and the gorilla
It begins, as these things often do, with a search for a source. Wellsians, as we style ourselves, are familiar with this picture of H.G. hanging with a gorilla skeleton, What I didn’t realize was how...
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A mini-lecture and a book
As a recently retired history professor, I cannot help a little lecturing when there is confusion. My heart is breaking for those suffering in the eastern Mediterranean, so as an author and historian...
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