THE CORRESPONDENCE OF H. G. WELLS: Complete in Four Volumes – Vol. I: 1880-1903; Vol. II: 1904-1918; Vol. III: 1919-1934; Vol. IV: 1935-1946.

First edition, first printings. Four Volume Set. Original red cloth, the spines lettered and ruled in gilt to green labels. Issued without dustwrappers. A fine set, bindings square and firm, the contents clean and bright throughout. There is a tiny patch of loss to the gilt lettering (the lower half of the editor's name) to the spine of Vol. I (down to manufacture rather than rubbing). A lovely, sharp example of this important set.

As Patrick Parrinder, the consulting editor, writes in the Preface to these four packed volumes, "To his output of 150 books and pamphlets and over 4200 published items we may now add some 2,800 selected letters. The statistics alone are impressive enough, but the letters offer a unique record of the intellectual vitality, the sense of mission, the candour and the personal warmth that Wells sustained throughout his long life." A monumental editorial feat, drawing on more than fifty archives and libraries (including the papers of Wells's daughter), the correspondence is as much a portrait of the age as the author. Wells corresponded with President Roosevelt, Prime Ministers Churchill and Balfour; with friends and lovers including Rebecca West, Eileen Power, Gertrude Stein, Marie Stopes, and Dorothy Richardson; not to speak of correspondence with the press and the BBC. In addition to his own letters there is a selection of letters addressed to Wells (where his own are not extant) including those from Joseph Conrad, Jung, Trotsky, and J.C. Smuts. "David Smith demonstrated his scholarship in his political biography of Wells ('Desperately Mortal', 1986) and deserves the highest praise for the expertise and patience he has brought to this later enterprise not least in deciphering Wells's tiny handwriting. Detailed [...] notes inform a high proportion of the items." (Simon J. James, TLS, May 8, 1998).