May Afternoon

Little information survives on Catherine’s life. She was born Amy Catherine Robbins in 1872. In about 1892 she was a student in a biology cramming class where the teacher was H G Wells. Though married he was quickly attracted to his student and within a short time they were living together in Woking, Surrey. He then divorced his first wife and married Catherine in October 1895 at St Pancras registery office. In the early years they were poor to the point that they could not afford to start a family. When they did they had two children; Philip in 1901 and Frank two years later. For much of her life she seemed to pursue other interests, being a mother, a gardener, running much of her husband’s business affairs and this seemed to leave little time for her own literary pursuits. She published little during her lifetime apart from a few poems and some short stories. Indeed her prodigiously talented husband even referred to her as ‘Jane’ and soon all around her did too, her writing life seemingly in another personality far, far away. By the mid 20’s she was ill with cancer and succumbed to its advance in 1927. Wells, although wayward and promiscuous during much of the marriage, now attempted to put his wife’s literary merits into book form and published ‘The Book of Catherine Wells’, a collection of short stories and poems.