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123 WELLS, H. G. Kipps. The Story of a Simple Soul. London: Macmillan and Co., 1905 A humorous yet pointed inscription to Henry James First edition, first impression, presentation copy, inscribed by the author on the half-title, “To Henry James, (who did not send me the Golden Bowl), from H. G. Wells”. Wells makes reference to The Golden Bowl which James had published the previous year. James wrote to Wells on 19 November 1905 acknowledging “your magnificent bounty” and hailing Kipps as “the first intelligently and consistently ironic or satiric novel . . . the book has throughout such extraordinary life; everyone in it, without exception, and every piece and part of it, is so vivid and sharp and raw ” ( Letters , pp. 41–2). Wells concluded by stating: “let me say just one word of attenuation of my (only apparent) meanness over the Golden Bowl . I was in America when that work appeared, and it was published there in two vols. and in very charming and readable form . . . But there came over to me a copy of the London issue, fat, vile, small-typed, horrific, prohibitive, that so broke my heart that I vowed I wouldn’t, for very shame, disseminate it, and I haven’t, with that feeling, had a copy in the house or sent one to a single friend”.
Henry James had, at first, recognised talent in the work of H. G. Wells. He wrote: “You are, for me . . . the most interesting ‘literary man’ of your generation – in fact, the only interesting one” ( Letters , p. 40). In time, however, James reassessed the younger writer and confided to Mrs Humphry Ward that Wells’s writing displayed “so much talent with so little art, so much life with (so to speak) so little living” (ibid., pp. 275–6). In 1915, Wells published Boon , in which the fifth chapter was entitled “Of Art, of Literature, of Mr Henry James”. Wells stated that James “has no penetration . . . James’s selection becomes just omission and nothing more . . . It’s like cleaning rabbits for the table” and that James’s style was like “a magnificent but painful hippopotamus resolved at any cost, even at the cost of its dignity, upon picking up a pea which has got into a corner of its den”. Although Wells maintained a friendly respect for James, one of the great literary quarrels was born, debating the purpose of art and the purpose of the writer. Octavo. Original green cloth, spine and front cover lettered in gilt, front cover with decoration in blind, top edge gilt. 8pp. publisher’s catalogue at rear dated “10.10.’05”. Extremities rubbed, spine slightly toned and skewed, some light foxing, a very good copy. ¶ Wells 56; Percy Lubbock, ed., The Letters of Henry James , vol. II, 1920. £9,500 [158170]
All items are fully described and photographed at peterharrington.co.uk
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