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A MISFIT IN ALL TIMES: H. G. WELLS AND “THE LAST WAR”
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 July 2016
Abstract
The First World War is often alluded to as “the war to end all wars,” a phrase credited to H. G. Wells at the outbreak of the conflict. Rather than a self-proclaimed product of war enthusiasm in 1914, his declaration represented a consistent vision of warfare that Wells circulated in much of his work: that a major war would cause the collapse of the nation state and facilitate the rise of a utopian, technocratic world state. Although partly a cultural product of his own times, Wells mythologized himself as a misfit in all times: a sociopolitical critic antithetical to the madness of his own society. This study asserts that rather than an attempt at prophecy, it is this misfit image that informed his declaration in 1914 and societal responses to it.
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Footnotes
* I would like to thank Andrea Lynn for suggesting source material on H. G. Wells that helped begin this project; Professor Jane Garnett at Wadham College, University of Oxford; and Professors Kathleen Clark, John Morrow, and James McClung at the University of Georgia. I would also like to acknowledge my fellow graduate students at the University of Georgia who provided invaluable feedback in the early stages of this project, particularly Nicole Gallucci, Kate Dahlstrand, Liz Busquets, Monica Blair, Michele Johnson, Aleck Stephens, and Kiersten Rom.
References
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55 This does not intend to identify “socialist” or “British left” as a monolith. For more on liberal attitudes to war leading up to the First World War see Matthew Johnson, Militarism and the British Left, 1902–1914 (New York, 2013).
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