This Norton Critical Edition includes: The 1896 William Heinemann edition of Wells’s novel—a cauldron of scientific ambition, interspecies conflict, and neocolonial violence—with a glossary of nautical, botanical, and geological terms. A preface with a note on the text, contextualizing headnotes, and explanatory footnotes by Kimberly W. Benston.
Seven illustrations, including the 1896 frontispiece and artworks relating to the novel’s context. An especially rich selection of contextual materials, topically organized: Evolution: Theory, Society, Language, and Ethics; Race, Cannibalism, and Empire; Animality, Science, and the Vivisection Debate; and Wells on Evolution, Pain, Extinction, and Animal Mind. Thirteen critical interpretations, from reviews upon publication to current critical scholarship. A chronology of Wells’s life and a selected bibliography.