Selected Stories of H. G. Wells

PUBLICATION HISTORY

Throughout his more than fifty-year career, H. G. Wells wrote over eighty short stories. Some stories were first published in periodicals, others in five short-story collections. Many of these stories appeared numerous times in Wells’s collections, sometimes slightly revised, other times reworded or with new endings, as was the case with “The Country of the Blind.” Numerous bibliographies detailing the publication history of Wells’s fiction and nonfiction can be found online or in reference libraries.

The following list details where the stories included in this edition were first published and their subsequent republications in short-story collections.

“A Slip Under the Microscope”: Yellow Book, January 1896; later in The Plattner Story and Others (1897) and The Country of the Blind and Other Stories (1913).

“The Remarkable Case of Davidson’s Eyes”: Pall Mall Budget, March 28, 1895; later in The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents (1895) and The Country of the Blind and Other Stories (1913).

“The Plattner Story”: New Review, April 1896; later in The Plattner Story and Others (1897) and The Country of the Blind and Other Stories (1913).

“Under the Knife”: New Review, January 1896; later in The Plattner Story and Others (1897) and The Country of the Blind and Other Stories (1913).

“The Crystal Egg”: New Review, May 1897; later in Tales of Space and Time (1899) and The Country of the Blind and Other Stories (1913).

“The New Accelerator”: Strand Magazine, December 1901; later in Twelve Stories and a Dream (1903) and The Country of the Blind and Other Stories (1913).

“The Stolen Body”: Strand Magazine, November 1898; later in Twelve Stories and a Dream (1903).

“The Argonauts of the Air”: Phil May’s Annual, December 1895; later in The Plattner Story and Others (1897) and Thirty Strange Stories (1897).

“In the Abyss”: Pearson’s Magazine, August 1, 1896; later in The Plattner Story and Others (1897).

“The Star”: Graphic, December 1897; later in Tales of Space and Time (1899) and The Country of the Blind and Other Stories (1913).

“The Land Ironclads”: Strand Magazine, December 1903.

“A Dream of Armageddon”: Black and White Budget, May–June 1901; later in Twelve Stories and a Dream (1903) and The Country of the Blind and Other Stories (1913).

“The Lord of the Dynamos”: Pall Mall Budget, September 6, 1894; later in The Stolen Bacillus, and Other Incidents (1895), Thirty Strange Stories (1897), and The Country of the Blind and Other Stories (1913).

“The Valley of Spiders”: Strand Magazine, March 1903; later in Twelve Stories and a Dream (1903) and The Country of the Blind and Other Stories (1913).

“The Story of the Late Mr. Elvesham”: Idler, May 1896; later in The Plattner Story and Others (1897), Thirty Strange Stories (1897), and The Country of the Blind and Other Stories (1913).

“The Man Who Could Work Miracles”: Illustrated London News, July 1898; later in The Country of the Blind and Other Stories (1913).

“The Magic Shop”: Strange Magazine, June 1903; later in Twelve Stories and a Dream (1903) and The Country of the Blind and Other Stories (1913).

“Mr. Skelmersdale in Fairyland”: London Magazine, July 1898; later in Twelve Stories and a Dream (1903).

“The Door in the Wall”: Daily Chronicle, July 14, 1906; later in The Country of the Blind and Other Stories (1913).

“The Presence by the Fire”: Penny Illustrated Paper, August 14, 1897.

“A Vision of Judgment”: Butterfly, September 1899; later in The Country of the Blind and Other Stories (1913).

“The Story of the Last Trump”: first published as chapter 10 of Boon, the Mind of the Race, the Wild Asses of the Devil, and the Last Trump, Being a First Selection from the Literary Remains of George Boon, Appropriate to the Times (1915).

“The Wild Asses of the Devil”: first published as chapter 8 of Boon.

“Answer to Prayer”: New Statesman, April 10, 1937.

“The Queer Story of Brownlow’s Newspaper”: Strand Magazine, February 1932.

“The Country of the Blind”: the first version of this story appeared in Strand Magazine, April 1904, and later in The Country of the Blind and Other Stories (1913). The revised, expanded version appeared in The Country of the Blind (1939).