The Open Heart
Stories & Poetry of Catherine Wells
Published on 31. March 2025
Book
Hardback
416 pages
978-1-83562-255-1 (ISBN)
Description
Catherine Wells (1872-1927) was the wife of H.G. Wells and the author of short stories, poems and an unfinished novella, The Open Heart, a haunting study of a woman's sense of unfulfilment that adds significantly to our knowledge of early 20th-century feminism. Published here for the first time, The Open Heart is brought together with her stories and poems that appeared in The Book of Catherine Wells (1928).
The Open Heart tells of a woman's shipwreck on a deserted island in the Pacific Ocean, a kind of earthly paradise in which she finds herself entirely alone. Included, too, in this collection are Catherine Wells' highly accomplished tales of forbidden love, of a woman's subjection to a dominant and possessive husband and of female despair. These stories illustrate what H.G. Wells called 'her brooding tenderness', her 'sense of invincible fatality' and her 'predisposition towards a haunting, dreamland fantasy of fear'.
The Flame Tree Beyond and Within short story collections bring together tales of myth and imagination by modern and contemporary writers, carefully selected by anthologists, and sometimes featuring short stories from a single author. Overall, the series presents a wide range of diverse and inclusive voices with myth, folkloric-inflected short fiction, and an emphasis on the supernatural, science fiction, the mysterious and the speculative.
The Open Heart tells of a woman's shipwreck on a deserted island in the Pacific Ocean, a kind of earthly paradise in which she finds herself entirely alone. Included, too, in this collection are Catherine Wells' highly accomplished tales of forbidden love, of a woman's subjection to a dominant and possessive husband and of female despair. These stories illustrate what H.G. Wells called 'her brooding tenderness', her 'sense of invincible fatality' and her 'predisposition towards a haunting, dreamland fantasy of fear'.
The Flame Tree Beyond and Within short story collections bring together tales of myth and imagination by modern and contemporary writers, carefully selected by anthologists, and sometimes featuring short stories from a single author. Overall, the series presents a wide range of diverse and inclusive voices with myth, folkloric-inflected short fiction, and an emphasis on the supernatural, science fiction, the mysterious and the speculative.
Reviews / Votes
'Her fiction and poems are fascinating, and nearly all contain an element of fantasy or otherworldliness that would have set them apart from most other stories written at the time. In 'The Last Fairy', Catherine reveals her humour, often present, as an ancient fairy wreaks havoc in a town due to her inability to remember the spells she once knew. [...] Beautiful descriptions of nature suffuse the stories, reflecting Catherine's passion for flowers and gardening. [...] The unfinished novella, The Open Heart, is in fact a philosophical discourse on fidelity in love and marriage, the limitations of organised religion, the rights of women and societal constrains in general, all topics also close to the heart of Catherine's husband. The fantastical setting - a huge and beautiful uninhabited palace where the ship-wrecked female narrator is the only human - brings to mind the hauntingly beautiful setting of Susannah Clarke's novel Piranesi (2020). Overall, this volume reveals Catherine Wells to have been a modern, forgiving, capable woman, very much in control of a life that she made work for her. She was also, clearly, a talented writer who deserves her moment in the spotlight. -- Times Literary Supplement "Whether it's scandal, humour, repression, or yearning, Catherine Wells' writing offers new angles on established ideas; and so while 'The Open Heart' itself is the only "new" addition, since all of Wells' prose/poems here have been published before, it's worth a gander, and especially if you've never experienced her writing before, this is where to go!" -- The Ginger Nuts of Horror "[To] be enjoyed as beautiful, scary and, sometimes, odd little tales in their own right." -- ConcatenationMore details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
Illustrations
25 Line drawings, black and white
Dimensions
Height: 202 mm
Width: 127 mm
Thickness: 34 mm
Weight
574 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-83562-255-1 (9781835622551)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Catherine Wells (1872-1927), born Amy Catherine Robbins, worked as a teacher and studied at Tutorial College, Holborn where she met and later married H.G. Wells. She is regarded as a great supporter of her husband's literary outpourings, while quietly creating her own stories, long-neglected until now.
Emelyne Godfrey, PhD, is Chairperson of the H.G. Wells Society. She is author of Femininity, Crime and Self-Defence in Victorian Literature and Society (2012). In 2014 she edited The Convert, the first suffragette novel, originally published in 1907. Most recently, she was editor of Utopias and Dystopias in the Fiction of H.G. Wells and William Morris (2016).
Patrick Parrinder is Emeritus Professor of English at the University of Reading and President of the H.G. Wells Society. He is the author of many books on H.G. Wells, science fiction and modern literature and is General Editor of the 12-volume Oxford History of the Novel in English (2011-24).
Emelyne Godfrey, PhD, is Chairperson of the H.G. Wells Society. She is author of Femininity, Crime and Self-Defence in Victorian Literature and Society (2012). In 2014 she edited The Convert, the first suffragette novel, originally published in 1907. Most recently, she was editor of Utopias and Dystopias in the Fiction of H.G. Wells and William Morris (2016).
Patrick Parrinder is Emeritus Professor of English at the University of Reading and President of the H.G. Wells Society. He is the author of many books on H.G. Wells, science fiction and modern literature and is General Editor of the 12-volume Oxford History of the Novel in English (2011-24).