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went up the stairs. I went
GANGNES: The 1898 volume inserts the following paragraph between these two:
"I followed them to my study, and found lying on my writing-table still, with the selenite paper weight upon it, the sheet of work I had left on the afternoon of the opening of the cylinder. For a space I stood reading over my abandoned arguments. It was a paper on the probable development of Moral Ideas with the development of the civilising process; and the last sentence was the opening of a prophecy: 'In about two hundred years,' I had written, 'we may expect——' The sentence ended abruptly. I remembered my inability to fix my mind that morning, scarcely a month gone by, and how I had broken off to get my Daily Chronicle from the newsboy. I remembered how I went down to the garden gate as he came along, and how I had listened to his odd story of 'Men from Mars.'"
Through this revision, Wells reminds the reader that the narrator is a philosophical writer. There is an irony here: in his paper, the narrator speculates on moral development two centuries after what ends up being the arrival of the Martians. Speculating about far-future morality is proven folly in the face of an unforeseen present crisis that leaves human beings struggling to live at all, let alone live according to a certain moral code. There is also an implicit irony to the fact that the Martians are at least two centuries ahead of human beings technologically, and they have their own "moral" codes far different to what the narrator might have expected. See text comparison page.
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Jewess
GANGNES: Another instance of casual anti-Semitic language, though the narrator does not seem to mean it disparagingly, and it is not nearly as offensive as "the Jew" clutching at gold in the narrator's brother's story. The word did not have to be changed (if, indeed, it would have been changed) for the volume because this entire section was cut.
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XXII.―THE EPILOGUE.
GANGNES: The Epilogue was completely overhauled for the 1898 volume. Firstly, it was split into two parts: Book II, Ch. IX ("Wreckage") and Book II, Ch. X ("Epilogue"). The first five paragraphs of the serial's Epilogue were cut, and eight new paragraphs were written for the beginning of Book II, Ch. IX, the rest of which came from the serial's Epilogue. A few other paragraphs from the serial were cut for the new Epilogue (see below notes).
This rearrangement and supplementation of text has been simplified and/or glossed over in other scholars' accounts of revisions between the Pearson's version and the 1898 volume of the novel. When mentioned at all, it is often said that for the volume, Wells added "The Man on Putney Hill" and a "new Epilogue." Comparison of the text reveals that the reality of the revision was far more complicated, with a fair amount of text preserved from the serial to create the reworked Epilogue. Engaging with these nuanced changes offers insights into not only the editorial process of collecting serialized works for volume publication, but also the degree to which rearranging, tweaking, and supplementing text can affect pacing, characterization, and "message" at the end of a novel. See text comparison page.
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put upon this earth. Here and there they were scattered
GANGNES: In the 1898 volume, a large paragraph is added between these two:
"For so it had come about, as indeed I and many men might have foreseen had not terror and disaster blinded our minds. These germs of disease have taken toll of humanity since the beginning of things—taken toll of our prehuman ancestors since life began here. But by virtue of this natural selection of our kind we have developed resisting power; to no germs do we succumb without a struggle, and to many—those that cause putrefaction in dead matter, for instance—our living frames are altogether immune. But there are no bacteria in Mars, and directly these invaders arrived, directly they drank and fed, our microscopic allies began to work their overthrow. Already when I watched them they were irrevocably doomed, dying and rotting even as they went to and fro. It was inevitable. By the toll of a billion deaths man has bought his birthright of the earth, and it is his against all comers; it would still be his were the Martians ten times as mighty as they are. For neither do men live nor die in vain."
In the serialized text, a similar rumination on microorganisms and their role in the Martians' destruction is positioned, though not phrased the same way, closer to the end of the installment's epilogue. Changing the order of these mental asides by the narrator alters the pacing and reveals background information at different points in the narrative. See text comparison page.
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We were the last of men.
GANGNES: Cut from the 1898 volume. See text comparison page.
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Installment 6 of 9 (September 1897)
This installment comprises the text that is roughly comparable to Book I ("The Coming of the Martians"), part of Chapter XV through the beginning of XVII of the 1898 collected edition and subsequent versions.
This is the cover of the September 1897 issue of Pearson's Magazine:
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Just after midnight the fifth cylinder fell, green and livid, crushing a house, as I shall presently tell in fuller detail, beside the road between Richmond and Barnes. The fifth cylinder—and there were five more yet to come!
GANGNES: Cut from the 1898 version. Likely the extent to which the break between Chapters XVI and XVII changed the flow of the narrative made this installment ending redundant. It works very effectively in the serial as a suspense-building hint at the next part of the narrative, but is perhaps not necessary in a collected volume. See text comparison page.
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six million people
GANGNES: In the Pearson's Chapter XIV, the number of Londoners is written as "five million"; it is correct here, and Chapter XIV was changed in the volume so that both would read "six million."
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The Jew
GANGNES: The anti-Semitism embodied in this figure is clear even when "Jew" is changed to "man" in the 1898 volume and subsequent editions (see the text comparison page). As STOVER (111) observes, the caricature of a greedy "eagle-faced man" would have been recognizable to Victorian readers even with the explicit word "Jew" removed.
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And here I come upon the most obscure of all the problems that centre about the Martians, the riddle of the Black Gas.
GANGNES: The 1898 volume replaces this sentence with "Now at the time we could not understand these things, but later I was to learn the meaning of these ominous kopjes that gathered in the twilight." The fact that Chapter XV is not divided in the volume allows for a smoother transition. See text comparison page.
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I went down Putney High Street
GANGNES: The section beginning here and ending with "...across the pavement" is either removed from the 1898 volume or repurposed and moved until after an additional chapter--"The Man on Putney Hill"--is inserted. There is a lengthier note about "The Man on Putney Hill" at the beginning of Installment 9. See text comparison page.
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The bare idea of this is no doubt horribly repulsive to us, but at the same time I think that we should remember how repulsive our carnivorous habits would seem to an intelligent rabbit.
GANGNES: The text beginning with "I know it is..." and ending with "But I wander from my subject" several paragraphs later was cut from the 1898 volume. See text comparison page.
STOVER argues, "The reason Wells cut this passage from the book version is probably aesthetic. He did not wish to give away too much, if he were to keep with the novel's deepest artistic ambiguity" (188). However, this assessment risks oversimplifying an extensive edit. Apart from "giving away too much"--offering a lot of information that the narrator would not find out until much later and therefore informing the reader of details about the Martians relatively early--this passage can come off as "preachy" or overly philosophical in a way that Wells may have later decided he disliked.
This omitted section tells us a great deal not only about the Martians' grisly study of a live human subject, but also about the narrator's ideologies. Looking back on his first glimpses of the Martians from a later time of safety, the narrator offers a kind of persuasive philosophical essay (he is, by trade, a professional writer of similar essays) on the ethical and moral lessons to be gleaned, from the Martians' behavior, about humans' treatment of other animals.
While the passage may "wander from [the narrator's] subject," it offers an intriguing dissonance between the narrator's terror of being killed by the Martians--to the point where he sacrifices others' lives--and his cool, high-minded defense of their consumption of human beings.
In the end, Wells retains only the first sentence of this passage in the volume to speak very briefly to the narrator's philosophical thoughts on the matter. What we gain in narrative flow and "artistic ambiguity" we may lose in characterization.
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So it came about that I and the curate were imprisoned out of the sight of, and yet within sound of, the Martians, and by creeping up to the triangular hole in the broken wall, we could even lie (and to that our courage attained on the second day) peeping through a narrow crack between two masses of plaster at them.
GANGNES: The first six paragraphs of Chapter XIX were cut from the text when it was collected as a volume, and replaced with a similar amount of text at the beginning of what became Book II, Chapter II of the 1898 volume. See text comparison page.
The replacement of this section relates to Wells's reorganization of the narrative toward the end of the novel. Certain devices, such as the foreshadowing in sentences like "The dreadful thing that happened at last between myself and the curate, and how in the end I escaped from that house, I will defer from telling in this chapter," are not as necessary in a volume; in fact, they can disrupt narrative flow. Foreshadowing helps keep a serial reader interested in an installment of a story and interested in buying the next one when it comes out.
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Our situation was so strange and dangerous
GANGNES: A great deal of text here was shifted around and significantly revised for the volume. See text comparison page.
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In my convulsive excitement I took no heed of the artilleryman behind me, and to this day I do not know what became of him. I never set eyes on him again.
GANGNES: This line is cut from the 1898 version because it is no longer true. As HUGHES AND GEDULD (210) and others point out, the artilleryman becomes a major figure in the volume, featured in Chapter 7 of Book II, "The Man on Putney Hill." See text comparison page, the earlier note about the artilleryman on this page, and the note about the artilleryman on the Installment 3 page.
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a driver in the Artillery
From MCCONNELL170: "That is, he drove the horse-drawn carriage of the heavy field guns."
GANGNES: As other scholars have pointed out (e.g., HUGHES AND GEDULD 210), the marked difference in the role of the artilleryman in the Pearson's version as compared with the volume constitutes a significant change between the two versions. He is the "man" in the new chapter--"The Man on Putney Hill"--added for the volume, and he is a conduit through which the novel explores how humankind might grapple (or fail to grapple) with such a crisis as the Martian invasion. See Installment 9.
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Later I was to learn that this was the case. That with incredible rapidity these bodiless brains, these limbless intelligences, had built up these monstrous structures since their arrival, and, no longer sluggish and inert, were now able to go to and fro, destroying and irresistible.
GANGNES: This section is replaced in the 1898 edition with the following passage after "...rules in his body?":
"I began to compare the things to human machines, to ask myself for the first time in my life how an ironclad or a steam engine would seem to an intelligent lower animal."
This revision is particularly interesting because Wells removed language referring to steam engines and other human technologies in the narrator's description of the fighting machines in the previous chapter (beginning "And this Thing!").
In this site's page on "The Terrible Trades of Sheffield," a connection is drawn between these edits and Wells's opinion of Warwick Goble's illustrations, which were too close to human technologies. In the revision, then, Wells reframes human technologies as part of an analogy; Martian technology is beyond human technology to so extreme a degree as to be incomprehensible to humans.
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Knap Hill
GANGNES: Changed to "Knaphill" in the 1898 edition and subsequent versions.
From HUGHES AND GEDULD 204 and 230: Knaphill is ~3 miles due west from Horsell Common. The distances might seem exaggerated to today's readers, but they are presented from a pedestrian's perspective.
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SUMMARY
GANGNES: Summaries like these are common in serialized fiction, as they are in comics and in television series--a kind of "previously on" bit of information. This not only reminds readers of what happened in the previous installment (which in this case would have been released a month prior), but also allows new readers to jump in at a later issue if they missed out. This was especially important in cases where an issue of a popular magazine or newspaper might have been sold out.
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Perrotin, of the Nice Observatory
From HUGHES AND GEDULD 199: Nice Observatory was "France's most important nineteenth-century observatory." It was constructed in 1880 on Mt. Gros, northeast of Nice. It used a 30" refracting telescope.
From MCCONNELL 126: Henri Joseph Anastase Perrotin (1845-1904) was a French astronomer who worked at the Nice Observatory 1880-1904.
GANGNES: The 1898 edition adds a reference to Lick Observatory (in California), which the narrator says noticed the light before Perrotin did.
More information:
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Installment 9 of 9 (December 1897)
This installment comprises the text that is roughly comparable to Book II, Chapter VIII ("Dead London") through Chapter X ("The Epilogue") of the 1898 collected edition and subsequent versions. "The Man on Putney Hill"--Book II, Chapter VII of the volume--did not appear in the Pearson's version.
This is the cover of the December 1897 issue of Pearson's Magazine: the 1897 Double Christmas Number:
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XXI.―AFTER THE FIFTEEN DAYS (continued).
GANGNES: For the 1898 volume, Wells inserted a new chapter--"The Man on Putney Hill"--just before this point in the text. This chapter features a reunion between the narrator and the artilleryman he met in Woking in Installment 3. In this new chapter, the artilleryman shares his grandiose plans for a new human civilization that would be rebuilt in the water mains beneath London, so that even when the Martians take over, Britons can preserve their culture and thrive there until they are ready to rise up against the Martians. It soon becomes clear to the narrator that the artilleryman has gone mad: the "gulf between his dreams and his powers" is insurmountable. See the 1898 version of the text in facsimile and the Project Gutenberg transcription.
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The further I penetrated into London
GANGNES: In addition to the new chapter ("The Man on Putney Hill"), five paragraphs of text were added here in the 1898 volume as the beginning of a new chapter (Book II, Ch. VIII) called "Dead London." See text comparison page. The effect of these additions is that the narrator's experience wandering through an empty London is drawn out and given more narrative room to breathe; in the Pearson's version the narrator encounters the dying Martians much more quickly after his arrival in London.
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Somehow I felt that this was not the end.
GANGNES: This line and "That, at any rate, would be completion." (below) were cut from the 1898 volume. Perhaps Wells decided that less of the narrator's internal commentary on his feelings would be more effective. See text comparison page.
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two sodden creatures of despair
From HUGHES AND GEDULD 223: "The drunken man who is black as a sweep and the dead woman with the magnum of champagne. Wells added the statement that she is dead in revising the serial and evidently forgot to drop the mention of her here."
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black. Night
GANGNES: In the 1898 volume, the following line is added between these two sentences: "All about me the red weed clambered among the ruins, writing to get above me in the dimness." The addition perhaps adds a sense of being lost in an alien landscape rather than a familiar city; the Martians and their flora have not just destroyed London; they have taken over it. See text comparison page.
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below me. Then at the sound
GANGNES: The 1898 volume inserts a new sentence between these two: "Across the pit on its farther lip, flat and vast and strange, lay the great flying machine with which they had been experimenting upon our denser atmosphere when decay and death arrested them. Death had come not a day too soon." See text comparison page. This revelation raises the stakes in the volume; the serial mentions the Martians' flying machines but does not emphasize the danger posed by them, but the volume stresses that the Martians were improving their flying technology so that they could travel farther across Britain and beyond.
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There is a round store place for wines by the Chalk Farm Station, and vast railway yards, marked once with a graining of black rails, but red lined now with the quick rusting of a fortnight’s disuse.
GANGNES: This sentence is cut from the 1898 volume and a paragraph break is added. See text comparison page.
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I dashed out and caught her in my arms.
GANGNES: STOVER (248) incorrectly comments on this line as if it were the ending of the serialized version of the text:
"All critics think this is a weak ending, and ending it was in the serial version of 1897. The Epilogue is new to the book but it, too, strikes the very same note."
This is likely due to some confusion over the fact that an Epilogue was "new to the book"; Wells wrote a new Epilogue for the 1898 volume, for which he retained and rearranged portions of the serialized text, including this scene with the narrator's cousin and wife.
The asterisk inserted here indicates a "hard break" (paragraph break of several lines) in the serialized text, but it is not, as Stover calls it, the novel's ending. Rather, it is simply a pause at the conclusion of the narrator's journey before he reflects on his telling of it, and the outcome and aftereffects of the Martian invasion.
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At the very base of the vegetable kingdom
GANGNES: The following two paragraphs are cut from the 1898 volume, likely because a similar discussion of microorganisms appears in a different place in the revision. See text comparison page.
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three lines in the green
From MCCONNELL 297: "A contradiction. In Book I, Chapter Fifteen, the black smoke is said to produce unusual lines in the blue of the spectrum."
GANGNES: This contradiction appears in the volume because of an added passage in Chapter XV. See note in Installment 6.
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possible that it combines with argon
From HUGHES AND GEDULD 225: "This contradicts the earlier statement that the Black Smoke contained 'an unknown element giving a group of four lines in the blue spectrum'. ... Actually, argon, as an inert gas, cannot combine with another element to form a compound."
GANGNES: The "blue spectrum" line is not in the serial. See Installment 6 note. HUGHES AND GEDULD (225) speculate that this kind of "carelessness in this final chapter probably reflects Wells's changing intentions regarding its publication." These "changing intentions" had much to do with Heinemann's insistence on the book being longer (HUGHES AND GEDULD 5-6).
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It has often been asked
GANGNES: The following two paragraphs were cut from the 1898 volume. They are substituted in a different part of the ending with a shorter comment about the Martians' flying machines inserted farther up. See note above and text comparison page. In the revision process, the flying machines become a point of frightening calamity avoided rather than a scientific discussion.
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The photographs were reproduced
GANGNES: This sentence was cut from the 1898 volume; we lose this referencing back to the Nature article. See text comparison page.
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Installment 8 of 9 (November 1897)
This installment comprises the text that is roughly comparable to Book II, Chapter II ("What We Saw from the Ruined House") through Chapter VI ("The Work of Fifteen Days") of the 1898 collected edition and subsequent versions.
This is the cover of the November 1897 issue of Pearson's Magazine:
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would have crushed them
GANGNES: The following sentence is added here to the 1898 volume: "And while I am engaged in this description, I may add in this place certain further details which, although they were not all evident to us at the time, will enable the reader who is unacquainted with them to form a clearer picture of these offensive creatures." Wells makes a clearer distinction in the collected volume between his narrator's thoughts and feelings during the time of the narrative, and those during the writing of the narrative. See text comparison page.
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In three other points the Martian physiology differs from ours.
GANGNES: There are many small changes made to the descriptions of the Martians for the collected volume (see text comparison page). A seemingly nitpicky one is that every instance of a present-tense state of being (e.g., "differs," "do," "have," etc.) is past-tense in the volume. This is perhaps not a material difference, but it does affect the reader's understanding of whether the Martians might still be around at the end of the narrative, and/or if human beings can no longer consider Martians to be a thing of the past even if they defeat them; the Martians still exist on other planets.
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the case.
GANGNES: The 1898 version of the novel adds two paragraphs here about the thoughts of "a certain speculative writer of quasi-scientific repute" on Martian technology and anatomy. This is commonly thought to be a cheeky reference to Wells himself. See text comparison page.
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But of that I will write more at length later.
GANGNES: This line is replaced in the 1898 volume with "A hundred diseases, all the fevers and contagions of human life, consumption, cancers, tumours and such morbidities, never enter the scheme of their life." This constitutes a subtle foreshadowing about the ultimate fate of the Martians and is perhaps a bit more elegantly constructed than the serial's sentence.
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a stream of water.
GANGNES: A new paragraph is added here for the 1898 volume. See text comparison page. This paragraph constitutes one of the most significant revisions to the novel in terms of the text's relationship with Pearson's and illustration. The new paragraph covertly criticizes Warwick Goble's illustrations of the novel:
"I recall particularly the illustration of one of the first pamphlets to give a consecutive account of the war. The artist had evidently made a hasty study of one of the Fighting Machines, and there his knowledge ended. He presented them as tilted, stiff tripods, without either flexibility or subtlety, and with an altogether misleading monotony of effect. The pamphlet containing these renderings had a considerable vogue, and I mention them here simply to warn the reader against the impression they may have created. They were no more like the Martians I saw in action than a Dutch doll is like a human being. To my mind, the pamphlet would have been much better without them."
Wells's friend English writer Arnold Bennett noticed the new passage and wrote to Wells: “I gathered … that you were not exactly enchanted with Warwick Goble’s efforts.” Wells admitted the intentional critique: Goble “made people think my tale was a wearisome repetition of kettles on camera stands. I really don’t think he put a fair quantity of brain into that enterprise or I wouldn’t have slanged him in the book.”
References:
- Wells, H. G. A Critical Edition of The War of the Worlds: H. G. Wells’s Scientific Romance, with Introduction and Notes by David Y. Hughes and Harry M. Geduld. Edited by Harry M. Geduld. Indiana UP, 1993, pp. 216-217.
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There was the gigantic marching, fighting body of metal, carrying the generator of the Heat Ray, which I have already described.
GANGNES: The text from this point through the end of the chapter was cut from the 1898 volume and replaced by a more objective rumination on the differences between human and Martian technology--including the absence of the wheel in Martian machines--and more observations about the specifics of Martian anatomy and abilities. Instead of ending on the Martians' killing of a young boy for food, the chapter concludes with the curate drawing the narrator's attention back to him. See text comparison page.
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XX.—THE DEATH OF THE CURATE.
GANGNES: The 1898 volume is revised and reorganized here in such a way that there is another chapter--"The Days of Imprisonment"--before "The Death of the Curate." Between the first two paragraphs of this chapter in the serial and the third one ("After the eighth day..."), there is a massive amount of text added and shifted around to restructure the narrator's account of the time he and the curate spent in the ruined house before the curate died. These changes alter the pacing significantly. See text comparison page.
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Then I rushed to the door in the scullery.
GANGNES: The Martian tentacle's search for the narrator was revised and expanded somewhat for the 1898 volume. The changes slow the pacing down and increase tension. See text comparison page.
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On the thirteenth day
GANGNES: This paragraph was revised and expanded somewhat to include evidence of remorse from the narrator over his role in the curate's death (see text comparison page):
"During these days, in a rambling, inconclusive way, I thought much of the curate and of the manner of his death.
On the thirteenth day I drank some more water, and dozed and thought disjointedly of eating and of vague impossible plans of escape. Whenever I dozed I dreamt of horrible phantasms, of the death of the curate, or of sumptuous dinners; but, asleep or awake, I felt a keen pain that urged me to drink again and again. The light that came into the scullery was no longer grey, but red. To my disordered imagination it seemed the colour of blood."
We get no such indication that the narrator regrets sacrificing the curate's life to save his own in the serial.
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sand. I
GANGNES: The 1898 version adds the following small paragraph between these two sentences (see text comparison page):
"Slowly I thrust myself out through the red weed, and stood upon the mound of rubble. I could see in any direction save behind me, to the north, and neither Martians nor sign of Martians were to be seen. The pit dropped sheerly from my feet, but a little way along the rubbish afforded a practicable slope to the summit of the ruins. My chance of escape had come. I began to tremble."
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XXI.―AFTER THE FIFTEEN DAYS.
GANGNES: There is no paragraph here in the 1898 volume; it was moved to after "...gently swaying" (with a new sentence to end it: "And oh! the sweetness of the air!") and renamed, "The Work of Fifteen Days." See text comparison page.
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For a time I stood marvelling at the change that had come over the world.
GANGNES: This paragraph is revised and expanded into a lengthy passage wherein the narrator grapples with the changes in the countryside around him after finally escaping from the ruined house. He is reckless and dazed for a few moments before he gets a hold of himself again and begins to search for food. See text comparison page.
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But this is an anticipation.
GANGNES: This line was cut from the 1898 volume. It is the kind of text marker designed to keep serial audiences engaged in the narrative and clamoring to buy the next installment, but in a volume it may come off as unnecessary foreshadowing that distracts from the flow of the narrative. Wells has substituted another form of foreshadowing that is simultaneously subtler and more detailed. The following sentence was added just before this point (between "upon it." and "The fronds"): "Now by the action of natural selection, all terrestrial plants have acquired a resisting power against bacterial diseases—they never succumb without a severe struggle, but the red weed rotted like a thing already dead." See text comparison page.
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came out on Putney Common. Here
GANGNES: The 1898 volume adds a few sentences here wherein the narrator again comments on the landscape through which he is traveling alone (see text comparison page):
"Here the scenery changed from the strange and unfamiliar to the wreckage of the familiar: patches of ground exhibited the devastation of a cyclone, and in a few score yards I would come upon perfectly undisturbed spaces, houses with their blinds trimly drawn and doors closed, as if they had been left for a day by the owners, or as if their inhabitants slept within. The red weed was less abundant; the tall trees along the lane were free from the red creeper."
The addition enhances the desolate mood of the narrator's journey and contributes to the visual writing style for which Wells is so often lauded.
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pavement.
GANGNES: The 1898 volume here adds the line "She seemed asleep, but she was dead." This becomes a problem for consistency between the serial and the volume; see HUGHES AND GEDULD note in Installment 9.
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Installment 7 of 9 (October 1897)
This installment comprises the text that is roughly comparable to Book I ("The Coming of the Martians"), part of Chapter XVII and Chapter I of Book II ("London Under the Martians") of the 1898 collected edition and subsequent versions.
This is the cover of the October 1897 issue of Pearson's Magazine:
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To a balloonist
GANGNES: From this point to the end of the paragraph was cut for the 1898 edition. As the notes on Installment 6 indicate, a significant portion of the end of Installment 6 was moved to the next chapter, changing the flow and creation of suspense as the narrative moves toward what would become the split between Books I and II. See text comparison page.
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On Monday night came the sixth star, and it fell at Wimbledon.
GANGNES: Due to the shifting around of the narrative, this sentence is changed in the 1898 edition to: "Of the falling of the fifth cylinder I have presently to tell. The sixth star fell at Wimbledon." See text comparison page. HUGHES AND GEDULD (215) assert that this is "a slip"; the sixth and seventh cylinders "must fall on Tuesday and Wednesday nights." See below note on "Fifth Cylinder" that complicates matters further.
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XVIII.—LONDON UNDER THE MARTIANS.
GANGNES: In the 1898 edition, this is the point where the novel is split into two books. Book II is called "Earth Under the Martians," and this chapter becomes Chapter I of Book II: "Under Foot."
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My inexpertness as a story writer
GANGNES: In the 1898 edition, nearly the entirety of the text from this point through "...heels of fact" (the beginning of page 454) is cut and replaced by a new paragraph and a half. See text comparison page.
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Even in writing fiction I expect—since it is the commonest failure—it is hard to make each circumstance flow from its predecessors in a natural fashion, and to do so with the huge history I am sketching is certainly quite beyond my ability.
GANGNES: This section is part of a major cut to the chapter that occurred when the novel was split into two parts (as discussed above). In the serialized version of the text, the novel's narrator spends much more time reflecting on his own feelings and responses, as well as the storytelling process, than in the volume. Here Wells makes explicitly clear the narrator's unreliability (which is implicit in other parts of the text). Moreover, there is a strange critique of "romanticized" fiction that sets fiction up against this narrator's journalistic account of the invasion (which, of course, is fiction as well). The narrator's appeals to authority here may come off as prematurely defensive and disruptive of the narrative flow. It seems that Wells ultimately decided they would not be a strong start to Book II of the volume. See text comparison page.
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I was for staying in the village indefinitely, for there we had provisions for weeks, if necessary, and only the remotest chance of capture, but the curate was insistent, and I could not find it in me to stop alone. So, all being quiet throughout the afternoon, we started along
GANGNES: Cut in the 1898 version and replaced by a longer section. See text comparison page.
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it seemed quite deserted save for a prowling muzzled dog or so
GANGNES: This section was significantly revised for the 1898 version. Most notably, in the Pearson's version Twickenham is deserted, whereas in the 1898 version the narrator and curate cross paths with several other people who are fleeing, and there is more damage in the town. This creates quite a different effect: the serial evokes the haunting quality of a ghost town; the volume expresses an environment of urgency and destruction. See text comparison page.
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dust.
GANGNES: The 1898 volume adds this sentence: "Save that an unknown element giving a group of four lines in the blue of the spectrum is concerned, we are all still entirely ignorant of the nature of this substance." See text comparison page. HUGHES AND GEDULD (214) note that the addition creates an inconsistency; the epilogue describes "three lines in the green."
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Street Chobham
GANGNES: Should be "Street Cobham." This is an error that was likely made in the typesetting process for Pearson's, as it does not appear in other versions. The mix-up is understandable, especially as the narrator has spoken so often of Chobham and Chobham Road.
HUGHES AND GEDULD (119) point out that Street Chobham (with an H) is "well west of the Martians' line of march."
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My brother has described the flight of the people through Chipping Barnet very vividly. And the account of his Monday morning may serve to give an idea how it was with the individuals in that pouring multitude. He himself was no longer alone when he came to Chipping Barnet.
GANGNES: Cut from the 1898 volume; perhaps it was thought to be redundant. See text comparison page.
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So he got out of the fury of the panic
GANGNES: The text was significantly revised for the 1898 volume from this point through "...in time to save them"; Wells seems to have spent a great deal of effort grappling with how to describe the havoc and conflict of the flight from London. See text comparison page.
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companions
GANGNES: Corrected to "companion" in 1898 volume. See text comparison page.
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Such extraordinary introductions were by no means uncommon in those strange and wonderful days. These women had no idea where to go.
GANGNES: Cut from the 1898 volume. See text comparison page.
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“What is that murmur?” asked the stouter woman suddenly. They all listened and heard a sound like the droning of wheels in a distant factory, a murmurous sound, rising and falling. “If one did not know this was Middlesex,” said my brother, “we might take that for the sound of the sea.” “Do you think George can possibly find us here?” asked the slender woman abruptly. The man’s wife was for returning to their house, but my brother urged a hundred
GANGNES: This text was cut, with the rest of the last sentence, from the 1898 volume, and replaced with a few new sentences that streamline the scene. See text comparison page.
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“That sound,”
GANGNES: The next two paragraphs are cut from the 1898 volume, with smaller sentences and fragments added and cut through the end of page 355. Again Wells takes great care over the flow of this scene. See text comparison page.
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There were sad, haggard women rushing by, well dressed, with children that cried and stumbled, their dainty clothes smothered in dust, their weary faces smeared with tears. With many of those came men, sometimes helpful, sometimes lowering and savage. Fighting side by side with them pushed some weary street outcast in faded black rags, wide-eyed, loud-voiced, and foul-mouthed. There were sturdy workmen thrusting their way along, wretched unkempt men clothed like clerks or shopmen, struggling spasmodically, a wounded soldier my brother noticed, men dressed in the clothes of railway porters, one wretched creature in a nightshirt with a coat thrown over it.
GANGNES: In the 1898 volume, this section is moved down and inserted before "But varied as its composition was..." See text comparison page.
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“What does it all mean?” whispered Miss Elphinstone. “I don’t know,” said my brother. “But this poor child is dropping with fear and fatigue.”
GANGNES: Cut from the 1898 volume. See text comparison page.
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his limbs lay limp and dead
GANGNES: The 1898 volume changes this to "his lower limbs lay limp and dead"; this clarifies why the man is able to grasp for his money even though his back is broken. See text comparison page.
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As they passed the bend in the lane
GANGNES: From this point through the end of the installment, very significant changes were made between the serialized version and the 1898 volume. Apart from a large cut (see below), the final four large paragraphs were moved to the beginning of the next chapter (XVII). This difference changes the narrative's pacing and moments of suspense. See text comparison page.
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So my brother describes one striking phase of the great flight out of London on the morning of Monday. So vividly did that scene at the corner of the lane impress him, so vividly did he describe it, that I can now see the details of it almost as distinctly as if I had been present at the time. I wish I had the skill to give the reader the effect of his description. And that was just one drop of the flow of the panic taken and magnified.
GANGNES: Cut from the 1898 volume; perhaps it was thought to be redundant, especially with the change in chapter division. See note above and text comparison page.
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Installment 5 of 9 (August 1897)
This installment comprises the text that is roughly comparable to Book I ("The Coming of the Martians"), Chapter XIV and part of XV of the 1898 collected edition and subsequent versions.
This is the cover of the August 1897 issue of Pearson's Magazine:
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Sutton High Street on a Derby Day
GANGNES: The 1898 edition changes "Sutton" to "Epsom."
From MCCONNELL 198: "The town of Epsom, south of London, is the annual site of the Derby."
From HUGHES AND GEDULD 213: "teeming with people"; see Frith's painting "Derby Day" (1856-58) (below)
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(To be continued next month.)
GANGNES: In the serialized version of the novel, Chapter V was divided in half between installments 5 and 6. This imposed a kind of "false cliffhanger" that was often seen in Victorian serialized fiction because periodicals had a set number of pages per issue (sometimes with a little wiggle room) to devote to an installment of a serialized work.
This "false cliffhanger" would have affected a Victorian reader's sense of pacing and the feeling of suspense caused by the abrupt end of the installment in the middle of an intense battle. This a "to be continued" moment that was created by serialization rather than an author's intended pacing.
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Installment 4 of 9 (July 1897)
This installment comprises the text that is roughly comparable to Book I ("The Coming of the Martians"), Chapters XII-XIII of the 1898 collected edition and subsequent versions.
This is the cover of the July 1897 issue of Pearson's Magazine:
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, and so I resolved to go with the artilleryman
GANGNES: In the 1898 edition of the novel, this phrasing is changed and expanded in a way that begins to flesh out the artilleryman as a character. In the serialized version, we never see the artilleryman again after this installment, but he returns and serves a large role in the 1898 edition. See text comparison page and another note on the artilleryman farther down this page.
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The decapitated colossus
GANGNES: The scene beginning at this point and running through the end of the chapter was significantly revised with dozens of small rewordings. In addition to deemphasizing some of the narrator's personal emotions, as Wells does in other parts of the novel, these changes show Wells grappling with exactly how to describe the appearance and movement of the Martian fighting machines and the nigh-cinematic scene of destruction that makes this novel highly suited to visual adaptation. See text comparison page.
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When I realised that the Martians had passed I struggled to my feet, giddy and smarting from the scalding I received, and for a space I stood sick and helpless between the drifting steam and the suffocating, burning, and smouldering behind. Presently, through a gap in the thinning steam,
GANGNES: Cut from the 1898 version. This is another instance of removing the narrator's commentary on his own feelings and reactions, especially those that seem weak or cowardly. See text comparison page.
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I do not clearly remember the arrival of the curate
GANGNES: From this point through the end of the installment is one of the most heavily reworked scenes in the novel. There are significant cuts, additions, rearrangings, and rephrasings. The revisions alter the curate's mood and the narrator's emotional and intellectual responses to the curate's outburst. Through these edits, Wells seems to be grappling with how to most effectively present a critique of religion. See text comparison page.
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The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom
GANGNES: Reference to Proverbs 9:10: "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom: and the knowledge of the holy is understanding." This line is part of the cuts made to this installment between the serialized version and the volume. See text comparison page.
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Installment 3 of 9 (June 1897)
This installment comprises the text that is roughly comparable to Book I ("The Coming of the Martians"), Chapters IX-XI of the 1898 collected edition and subsequent versions.
This is the cover of the June 1897 issue of Pearson's Magazine:
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They
GANGNES: In the 1898 edition, this sentence (slightly edited) is preceded by, "It hardly seemed a fair fight to me at the time." In the revised version we are offered this bit of foreshadowing and characterization without a strong emotional component. See text comparison page.
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As soon as my astonishment would let me
GANGNES: Cut from the 1898 volume. Another removal of the narrator's emotions. See text comparison page.
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But that strange sight of the swift confusion and destruction of war, the first real glimpse of warfare that had ever come into my life, was photographed in an instant upon my memory.
GANGNES: Cut from the 1898 volume. Another removal of the narrator's emotional responses to the invasion. The "loss" here is part of the novel's discussion of photography and photographic war journalism specifically. The chapter ends (after "that quivering tumult") with an additional sentence: "I overtook and passed the doctor between Woking and Send." See text comparison page.
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I wanted to be in at the death.
GANGNES: The 1898 volume adds "I can best express my state of mind by saying that" to the beginning of this sentence. The change softens the impact of the narrator's emotions by adding an analytical "stepping back" from his feelings at the time. See text comparison page.
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I gripped the reins, and we went whirling along between hedges, and emerged in a minute or so upon the open common.
GANGNES: Cut from the 1898 volume. See text comparison page.
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And this Thing! How can I describe it?
GANGNES: This passage through the next page is the most striking and detailed description of the Martian fighting machines in the novel. Despite the degree of detail offered by the narrator, the machines' physical appearance has been depicted quite differently across various illustrations. Wells made his dislike of Goble's illustrations clear in a passage he added to what would become Book II, Chapter II of the 1898 volume. See Installment 8. He also cut and changed some phrasing to deemphasize comparisons to human technologies. See text comparison page.
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in its wallowing career
From DANAHAY 76: in its path
GANGNES: In the 1898 edition, "wallowing" is removed.
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But
GANGNES: The 1898 edition adds "That was the impression those instant flashes gave" before this sentence. See text comparison page.
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imagine it a great thing of metal, like the body of a colossal steam engine on a tripod stand
GANGNES: The 1898 volume changes this to simply "imagine it a great body of machinery on a tripod stand." This seems likely to be part of Wells's negative response to Warwick Goble's depictions of the Martian fighting machines, which resembled known human technology more than Wells would have liked. See text comparison page, note on "The Terrible Trades of Sheffield" below, and the additional passage in what would eventually become Book II, Chapter 2 in the 1898 volume.
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In this was the Martian.
GANGNES: Cut from the 1898 volume. Perhaps the sentence was thought to be redundant or that it revealed a piece of information the narrator could not have known at the time. See text comparison page.
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So
GANGNES: The 1898 volume inserts "And in an instant it was gone." and a paragraph break before this sentence. See text comparison page.
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simply stupefied
GANGNES: The 1898 volume replaces this phrase with "in the rain and darkness"; another instance of deemphasizing the narrator's emotions in favor of a more "objective" perspective. See text comparison page.
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The steaming air was full of a hot resinous smell.
GANGNES: Cut from the 1898 volume. See text comparison page.
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two or three distant
GANGNES: Cut from the 1898 volume. See text comparison page.
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, but I did not care to examine it
GANGNES: Cut from the 1898 volume. See text comparison page.
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I saw nothing unusual in my garden that night, though the gate was off its hinges, and the shrubs seemed trampled.
GANGNES: Cut from the 1898 volume. See text comparison page.
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My strength and courage seemed absolutely exhausted. A great horror of this darkness and desolation about me came upon me.
GANGNES: Cut from the 1898 volume. Another clear instance of removing references to the narrator's emotional and physical responses to his predicament. See text comparison page.
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I felt like a rat in a corner.
GANGNES: This is cut from the 1898 volume and a paragraph break is added to separate out the final sentence. See text comparison page.
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Street Chobham
GANGNES: This should be Cobham, which was confused with Chobham--a village to the northwest of Woking mentioned several times in the novel. Cobham is five miles to the east and slightly north of Woking on the way from Woking (via Byfleet) to Leatherhead. It seems that either Wells or the editors of Pearson's mistakenly wrote "Street Chobham" instead of "Street Cobham"; the error is corrected in the 1898 version.
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The light itself came from Chobham.
GANGNES: Cut from the 1898 volume. See text comparison page.
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I was so delighted
GANGNES: Cut from the 1898 volume. See text comparison page.
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I asked him a hundred questions.
GANGNES: Cut from the 1898 volume. See text comparison page.
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thing like a huge photographic camera
GANGNES: The 1898 volume replaces this with "complicated metallic case, about which green flashes scintillated" and changes "funnel" to "eye." Again we "lose" language about photography, despite the fact that the novel as a whole retains such references in other areas. See text comparison page.
Tags
- decollected: REFERENCE
- decollected: CLARIFICATION
- decollected: DANAHAY
- decollected: PEARSON'S
- decollected: PERIODICAL
- decollected: LOCATION
- decollected: ILLUSTRATION
- decollected: COMMENTARY
- decollected: VOLUME
- decollected: GANGNES
- decollected: SERIAL
- decollected: DEFINITION
- decollected: REVISION
Annotators
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Installment 2 of 9 (May 1897)
This installment comprises the text that is roughly comparable to Book I ("The Coming of the Martians"), Chapters V-VIII of the 1898 collected edition and subsequent versions.
This is the cover of the May 1897 issue of Pearson's Magazine:
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And then something happened, so swift, so incredible, that for a time it left me dumbfounded, not understanding at all the thing that I had seen.
GANGNES: Cut from the 1898 volume. This is another instance (see Installment 1) where a comment about the narrator's feelings has been removed. See text comparison page.
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It was the occurrence of a second, this swift, unanticipated, inexplicable death.
GANGNES: This sentence was cut from the 1898 volume. It begins a section of the text--from here through the end of Chapter V, that was heavily revised in the transition from serialized version to volume. Again, most of these revisions deemphasize the emotional (and sometimes physical) responses of the narrator to the Martians. This takes the focus of Wells's depictions of the Martians off of the narrator and perhaps allows the reader to form their own emotional response with minimal mediation from the narrator. See text comparison page.
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To think of it brings back very vividly the whooping of my panting breath as I ran. All about me gathered the invisible terrors of the Martians, that pitiless sword of heat seemed whirling to and fro, flourishing overhead before it descended and smote me out of life.
GANGNES: Cut from the 1898 volume. This is another instance of deemphasizing the narrator's emotional and physical responses to the Martians; the replacement sentence from the volume reads: "All about me gathered the invisible terrors of the Martians; that pitiless sword of heat seemed whirling to and fro, flourishing overhead before it descended and smote me out of life." See text comparison page.
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It seemed impossible to make these people grasp a terror upon which my mind even could not retain its grip of realisation.
GANGNES: Cut from the 1898 volume. This is yet another instance where a comment about the narrator's feelings has been removed. There are a few smaller edits in the next few paragraphs that have a similar effect. Some refer to the narrator's wife's emotional responses as well. See text comparison page.
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Soon after these pine woods and others about the Byfleet Golf Links were seen to be on fire.
GANGNES: In the 1898 volume, this sentence is replaced with simply, "This was the second cylinder." The change of a chapter's end in this way produces quite a different effect. The serialized sentence heightens the drama and serves as a very effective cliffhanger by evoking an image of destruction. The shorter, more straightforward chapter end sentence from the 1898 volume is freed from the pressure of contributing to a cliffhanger. It has a more objective, informative, journalistic tone while still promising action in the next chapter. See text comparison page.
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Daily News
GANGNES: Daily News here is changed to Daily Chronicle in the 1898 volume and subsequent editions. The discrepancy between Daily News in the serialized version and Daily Chronicle in the volume could be due to an error on Wells's part that was corrected for the 1898 edition.
The Daily News (1846-1912) was first advertised as a "Morning Newspaper of Liberal Politics and thorough Independence," set up as a rival to the Morning Chronicle. It was edited by Charles Dickens at its launch. The paper "advocated reform in social, political, and economic legislation, fought for a Free Press in supporting the repeal of the Stamp Act, campaigned for impartial dealings with the natives of India and supported Irish Home Rule." It was known for its detailed war reporting, which boosted its circulation.
The Daily Chronicle was a later name (beginning in 1877) of the Clerkenwell News (1855-1930). The paper was "liberal and radical," with a daily column entitled "The Labour Movement" featured in the 1890s. Interestingly, the paper eventually merged with the Daily News (becoming the News Chronicle), but not until 1930--after even the 1925 edition of The War of the Worlds, let alone the 1898 edition.
Source:
- Brake, Laurel, and Marysa Demoor, editors. Dictionary of Nineteenth-Century Journalism in Great Britain and Ireland. Academia Press and The British Library, 2009, p. 128 and 158.
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Installment 1 of 9 (April 1897)
This installment comprises the text that is roughly comparable to Book I ("The Coming of the Martians"), Chapters I-IV of the 1898 collected edition and subsequent versions.
This is the cover of the April 1897 issue of Pearson's Magazine:
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dreaming themselves the highest creatures in the whole vast universe
GANGNES: Cut from the 1898 volume. See text comparison page.
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For in those days there was no terror for men among the stars.
GANGNES: Cut from the 1898 volume. See text comparison page.
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At that my rigour of terror passed away.
GANGNES: Cut from the 1898 volume. See text comparison page. This is one of many instances in which the volume omits the narrator's references to his own feelings, especially somewhat cowardly/frightened reactions. Like appeals to the reader, personal responses could undermine the journalistic tone that characterizes most of the novel.
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