In 1892, while H.G. Wells was transforming himself from a draper’s assistant to a student of science, he married his cousin Isabel. He ungallantly described her in his Experiment in Autobiography (1934) as being at the time of their marriage ‘the one human being who was conceivable as an actual lover’. She did not much like having sex with him, however, and when he started teaching in Holborn he rapidly moved his attention to a student, Amy Catherine Robbins, whom he married (having divorced Isabel) in 1895, and whom he came to call ‘Jane’. She did not much like having sex with him either, but stuck with him and endured the affairs, some fleeting and some serious, that he conducted during their more than 30 years of married life (she died in 1927).

LRB 16 June 2011 | PDF Download