HG Wells Beyond Backward Politics

I originally intended to call this book: Don't You Ever Read Anything But Serious Books? Volume 5. And, in a sense, it still is. This was because I found one remaining pocket diary, in which I had made notes on my reading. It included the earliest books, which I had taken-on, after further education, in the early nineteen seventies. This was the kind of reading I was doing in volume 1. But it only came to scarcely 10,000 words, after including a few extras from other diaries. I then decided to do what I'd always put off doing. That is writing a substantial essay directly on H G Wells. I made it up to about the same length, without too much trouble or repetition of many previous allusions. I then realised this was the most significant work, not just by far the longest, in the book. True, I regarded the politics of Wells as critical. But there was far more to the man than his politics. And I wanted to do justice to various aspects. That is how this work came to be called: H G Wells Beyond Backward Politics. As a practical failure and refugee from the academic life, I still devoted myself to private study. For nearly 40 years, I sought every available second-hand book-shop, usually charity shops, and jumble sales for good books. The special delight of my emotionally deprived and pathetic existence was to find yet another HG Wells title, when such things were yet about. Eventually the internet came to my aid, and I ordered ten Wells books, at once, from Amazon. My last purchase was Collected Letters of HG Wells, including his last years, which was a comfort to my own last years.