Columbia Library columns (v.39(1989Nov-1990May))

(New York :  Friends of the Columbia Libraries.  )

Tools


 

Jump to page:

Table of Contents

  v.39,no.3(1990:May): Page 19  



Not Merely a Novelist                               19

Reynolds complied. Shortly afterward he forwarded to Wells an
apology from the Hearst office.

Offers continued to pour in—from Cosmopolitan for an article on
women's postwar status and from the Ladies' Home Journal for a
series on the failure of radical feminism, among numerous others—
but Wells decided again to take an indefinite recess from articles
once his "Front Book" was finished, and this time remained
adamant. From this point, active negotiations between him and
Reynolds were in abeyance. During the 1920s while Wells was
extending his fame as popular historian, Utopian, and champion of
international brotherhood, Reynolds served him mainly as conduit
for requests for reprint rights and transmitter of royalties. (The
Island of Dr. Moreau, the first novel Reynolds placed for him here,
remained a steady seller.)

Their relationship remained cordial, if never intimate, but was
certainly not free of vexations. Wells's difficult handwriting,
tardiness in submitting copy, and expensive corrections irked
editors. His willfulness, money grubbing, and stinginess (balking,
for example, at being charged for cables and postage) tried
Reynolds's patience. Wells for his part was frustrated in his attempts
to get Reynolds to place the work of various literary New Women
who figured in his life—Amy Catherine Robbins, a student who
became his second wife; the young Cambridge Fabian Amber
Reeves; and latterly the greatest of them, Rebecca West. When
Reynolds, after some delay, asked for West's address. Wells replied:
"Why didn't you take my advice when I gave it you?" (April 30,
1918). "I never met such a chap. I could not survive meeting such
another," was Shaw's verdict on his fellow Fabian. Reynolds's is not
recorded, but he might well have agreed with Shaw.

Permission to quote from H, G. Wells's letters has been eranted bv the trustees of the H. G Wells
Literary Estate.
  v.39,no.3(1990:May): Page 19