HG Wells – Page 9 – { feuilleton }

The night that panicked America

The Mercury Theatre on the air.

Being a long-time fan of both HG Wells and Orson Welles, the latter’s radio production of War of the Worlds with the Mercury Theatre group has always held a special fascination. This was staged sixty-nine years ago today, October 30th, 1938, and famously caused panic among listeners who missed the opening and believed they were hearing genuine news reports of an alien invasion. I’ve often listened to the rather crude recording of the play around this time of year, having owned that recording on vinyl, cassette tape and CD. These days you don’t have to buy it, you can head over to the Internet Archive or this Mercury Theatre page and grab an mp3 to discover what all the fuss was about. The recording may be crude but the presentation still strikes me as decades ahead of its time, with a very astute sense of how ordinary people behave when faced with the news media. I’ve always loved the attention to detail, such as the moment when the man who’s been interviewed at the crash site wants to carry on talking and the interviewer has to shut him up. That same verisimilitude was carried over to the newsreel footage in Citizen Kane (which was pretty much a Mercury production for cinema) and it was those moments in the radio play which helped encourage people to think that what they were hearing was real, not drama.

Screenwriter Howard Koch, who later polished the rudimentary draft script that became Casablanca, is credited as writer of the play but the adaptation was a group effort according to Koch in his book The Panic Broadcast (1970). The idea of presenting Wells’s story as a series of news bulletins came from Orson Welles and producer John Houseman, with Koch scripting the scenes and dialogue. Most of the other Mercury adaptations took a more traditional approach and if you want some spooky listening for Halloween I’d suggest you try their version of Dracula, also from 1938. The story is severely truncated, of course, but Agnes Moorehead is very impressive as Mina, there’s some remarkable music from Bernard Herrmann and Welles plays both Arthur Seward and the sinister Count.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Alexandre Alexeieff and Claire Parker
• The Door in the Wall
• Voodoo Macbeth
• War of the Worlds book covers

The Door in the Wall

Photographer Alvin Langdon Coburn (1882–1966) illustrates HG Wells’ wonderful short stories in a rare edition of The Door in the Wall and Other Stories, from 1911. More pictures here.

The Door in the Wall was a true three-way collaboration between the author, the photographer and the typographer, Frederic W. Goudy, who specifically produced his Kennerley Old Style typeface for this book. Designed in the elegant Arts-and-Crafts style, it was printed on French hand-made paper at Goudy’s Village Press in an edition of 600 copies. In fact, only 300 copies contain the full compliment of Coburn’s rich photogravures, due to some being damaged in shipment and being replaced by aquatones. The photographer personally prepared the gravure plates, pulled proofs and oversaw the printing of the edition.

The Door in the Wall.

The Lord of the Dynamos.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• War of the Worlds book covers

War of the Worlds book covers

Continuing the cover art theme, here’s a whole gallery of covers devoted to one book only, HG Wells’ The War of the Worlds, from 1898 to the present. Once again it’s fascinating to see how styles evolve and how different artists and designers approach the task of providing art for the same book. The most common approach with this particular novel has evidently been to depict the tripod machines laying waste to the Home Counties. The samples here follow the pattern: the uncredited 1967 Penguin edition above was the one I read originally (I still have a copy); the other is a cover by Philippe Druillet from 1973 showing a particularly heavy-footed and tentacular Martian vehicle. The site also includes some great interior illustrations.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The book covers archive

The Essex Street Water Gate, London WC2

He crossed the road and went into the darkness towards the little steps under the archway leading into Essex Street, and I let him go. And that was the last I ever saw of him.

The Diamond Maker (1894) by HG Wells

Old and New London – Its History, Its People and Its Places (1878).

London’s water gates date from the time before the building of the embankment and the road on the north side of the river, when the tidal wash reached a lot closer to the buildings (and former palaces) that follow The Strand and Fleet Street. The gate in Essex Street dates back to t0 1676, and was used for a time as an emblem by Methuen publishers when they had their premises here.

A plate from The Romance of London by Alan Ivimey (1931).

Methuen imprint (1931).

An etching by Edgar Holloway (1934).

Methuen imprint (1948).

The Water Gate as it was on the afternoon of 18th May, 2006.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The etching and engraving archive

Mushrooms on the Moon

Le Voyage dans la Lune (1902), directed by Georges Méliès and loosely inspired by the works of Jules Verne and HG Wells. Hard to believe this inventive little film is now over a hundred years old. Méliès made over 500 shorts like this, many of them just as clever and beguiling.