Joan and Peter

by H.G. Wells

Beautiful and brilliant This remarkable novel, with the subtitle "The Story of an Education", is full of love, tragedy, World War I scenes and perspectives on German, Irish, Russian, British and American issues and values. Joan and Peter, orphaned at five and with four guardians, run the gamut.

Genres: Fiction, Classics

414 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1918

About the author

Herbert George Wells was born to a working class family in Kent, England. Young Wells received a spotty education, interrupted by several illnesses and family difficulties, and became a draper's apprentice as a teenager. The headmaster of Midhurst Grammar School, where he had spent a year, arranged for him to return as an "usher," or student teacher. Wells earned a government scholarship in 1884, to study biology under Thomas Henry Huxley at the Normal School of Science. Wells earned his bachelor of science and doctor of science degrees at the University of London. After marrying his cousin, Isabel, Wells began to supplement his teaching salary with short stories and freelance articles, then books, including The Time Machine (1895), The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896), The Invisible Man (1897), and The War of the Worlds (1898).

Wells created a mild scandal when he divorced his cousin to marry one of his best students, Amy Catherine Robbins. Although his second marriage was lasting and produced two sons, Wells was an unabashed advocate of free (as opposed to "indiscriminate") love. He continued to openly have extra-marital liaisons, most famously with Margaret Sanger, and a ten-year relationship with the author Rebecca West, who had one of his two out-of-wedlock children. A one-time member of the Fabian Society, Wells sought active change. His 100 books included many novels, as well as nonfiction, such as A Modern Utopia (1905), The Outline of History (1920), A Short History of the World (1922), The Shape of Things to Come (1933), and The Work, Wealth and Happiness of Mankind (1932). One of his booklets was Crux Ansata, An Indictment of the Roman Catholic Church. Although Wells toyed briefly with the idea of a "divine will" in his book, God the Invisible King (1917), it was a temporary aberration. Wells used his international fame to promote his favorite causes, including the prevention of war, and was received by government officials around the world. He is best-remembered as an early writer of science fiction and futurism.

He was also an outspoken socialist. Wells and Jules Verne are each sometimes referred to as "The Fathers of Science Fiction". D. 1946.

More: http://philosopedia.org/index.php/H._...

http://www.online-literature.com/well...

http://www.hgwellsusa.50megs.com/

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/t...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._G._Wells

Reviews

[Lauren · Rating 5 out of 5]

An amazing book and a joy to read, especially in tandem with Mr Britling Sees It Through, Wells' incredible novel about domestic life during wartime.

In this book, also written right after WWI, Wells looks at the problems of education through two characters who are raised together as children and their guardian, a man who has spent much of his working life in Africa and come home to England to convalesce.

Wells is looking at education in the most holistic way - not just schools but what we learn from our parent,s our friends, what we read in books, what we hear in Church or from our poilticians. And because of so much of what Joan and Peter 'learn' leads to the war, Wells can examine all these modes of learning quite critically.

Wonderful characters, really gave me a sense of life during Edwardian England and the years leadign up to the war. Joan may be one of Wells' best female characters - full of life- and Oswald, one of his most sympathetic.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall a rather good read from Wells. As per usual, a smile was brought to my face as it only took Chapter 2 to mention is favourite group - The Fabian Society. However, similarly to previous stories on the pre to early WWI era, Wells focuses of ‘Political Philosophy’ rather than ‘Fabian Socialusm’, this book works rather well. Both drawing in politics, philosophy and socialist beliefs with a story of family, guardianship and love.

It was interesting to see the growing change in beliefs and views from Father and son. Well, we are the product of our experiences. The father/ guardian did seem to rationalise how best to educate and raise his children. It would have been nice to have explored the discord and change in beliefs between father and son, plus views on religion. But, there we go.

[Michael H · Rating 3 out of 5]

It’s somewhat disjointed as a novel, as if it were more a vehicle for Wells’s questions about education than a story focused on any particular character; but there are two or three brilliant set-piece scenes, and if you’re interested in the First World War period and how writers were looking beyond the war to a period of reconstruction, it’s also historically fascinating.

[Nicholas Whyte · Rating 4 out of 5]

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/joan-and-peter-by-h-g-wells/

This is the last of the set of novels by H.G. Wells that I bought in 2019 and have been working my way through ever since. I’m glad to say that after a couple of real duds, I have ended on a high note. It’s a very long book, and you know where it is going as soon as you see the title, but I found it very worthwhile and interesting.

Joan and Peter are cousins, and are orphaned quite early in the book and brought up together. Their guardianship passes from a pair of eccentric left-wing aunts (“I suspect them strongly of vegetarianism”), to a monstrous conservative cousin (“In spite of its loyalty, Ulster is damp”), to another cousin, war hero Oswald who has been busy civilising Africa and wants to do the same for England, or at least for the two children who he has ended up with.

Wells’ Big Theme for the book is education, and Oswald’s efforts to secure it for both Peter and Joan (“if women were to be let out of purdah they might as well be let right out”), but if you can ignore the lengthy philosophising about that, and the certainty that the White Man hath his Burden, there’s rather a good human story between Oswald and Peter’s parents at the start, and then between Oswald, Joan and Peter.

The two kids both have plenty of other potential lovers apart from each other, but I am a bit of a romantic at heart and I do like the slow path to the (spoiler) happy ending. Adam Roberts didn’t; he found the pace far too slow. I was reading a couple of other very long books at the time, so it suited me. I will agree with Adam that Wells makes Joan sound unnecessarily childish, even as an adult.

There are some great lines. Here’s one of Joan’s unsuccessful boyfriends:

"…when Huntley went on to suggest that the path to freedom lay in the heroic abandonment of the “fetish of chastity,” Joan was sensible of a certain lagging of spirit."

Here are the lefty aunts:

"Aunt Phoebe sat near Aunt Phyllis and discoursed on whether she ought to go to prison for the Vote. “I try to assault policemen,” she said. “But they elude me.”"

Here’s one of the failed educational theorists who Oswald interviews:

"Hinks of Carchester, the distinguished Greek scholar, slipped into his hand at parting a pamphlet asserting that only Greek studies would make a man write English beautifully and precisely. Unhappily for his argument Hinks had written his pamphlet neither beautifully nor precisely."

And here’s just a nice bit of scene-setting:

"Slowly, smoothly, unfalteringly, the brush of the twilight had been sweeping its neutral tint across the spectacle, painting out the glittering symbols one by one. A chill from outer space fell down through the thin Russian air, a dark transparent curtain. Oswald shivered in his wadded coat. Abruptly down below, hard by a ghostly white church, one lamp and then another pricked the deepening blue. A little dark tram-car that crept towards them out of the city ways to fetch them back into the city, suddenly became a glow-worm…"

As with Mr Polly, there is a crucial plot twist depending on a fake death by drowning.

Also, uniquely in Wells’ work as far as I have read it, there is a significant section set in Ireland. Wells’ characters generally float back and forth on Home Rule (more forth than back); here, Peter and Oswald go on a fact-finding mission to pre-war Dublin and are a bit disappointed with the facts that they find, while the monstrous conservative cousin Lady Charlotte throws her energy into Unionism:

“We’re raising money to get those brave Ulstermen guns. Something has to be done if these Liberals are not to do as they like with us. They and their friends the priests.”

There’s a certain amount of “these tedious people and their comic accents quarreling with each other rather than working for a better world society”, but there’s also some good observation based on personal experience, rather than just reading the newspapers.

[Philip Harford · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was fascinated with this book.
It was an insight of how schools were and how education was pre war years.
At some point you just know that there will be some chapters explaining political problems but they always feel as though Wells wrote these books to put across his own opinions.
Despite this, the other chapters are well written but like a good Mahler symphony, just a touch too long!

[Mel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have to say it was a joy to go back and read another book by Wells. I just love the way that he writes. There is just something about his style that I find immensely appealing. In this book Wells looks at the problems of education and how education affects how people are able to think and how this affects the country as a whole. Here he blames the inability to govern the British Empire down to the fact that people are so poorly educated. Wells tackles Christian and classical ideas on education and children. But this is more than simply a book of ideas. I found that I also greatly enjoyed the characterisation and that there were some genuinely dramatic moments. Peter’s mother swimming to the shore when her boat capsized was rather heart wrenching, as are the effects of the War on Peter and Joan. The book starts in late Victorian England and ends shortly after the first world war. It covers the transition between the end of the Victorian era, and the aimlessness of the next generation very well. The main characters grow up with the best education that can be found in England at the time, which is freely admitted to be not very good. They grow up and deal with love, decadence and the reality of war in a very meaningful way. I greatly enjoyed this book. It’s not one of Wells’ better-known works but I’m very glad to have found it in the charity shop. I thought it was highly enjoyable as well as very insightful.

[Dianne Hartsock · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good book, but became very political at the end. Pretty love story, though.