was serialised in
Strand Magazinebetween December 1900 and August 1901 before being published in book form in September 1901. Building on the success of
The Time Machine(1895),
The Island of Doctor Moreau(1896),
The Invisible Man(1897) and
The War of the Worlds(1898),
The First Men in the Moonis the only one of Wells’s “scientific romances” to imagine a human voyage into space.
The First Men in the Moonjoins an established tradition of lunar voyage narratives, including Francis Godwin’s
The Man in the Moon(1638) and Jules Verne’s
From the Earth to the Moon(1865). Wells himself regarded the work highly, and considered it his finest scientific romance.
The romance begins with Bedford, a failed businessman and the story’s narrator, retiring to
2018 words
Citation: McLean, Steven. "The First Men in the Moon". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 24 June 2012 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=849, accessed 25 November 2024.]
