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The Sleeper Awakes Preface to the New Edition · The H. G. Wells Library

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  Speaker 1: Preface to the new edition When the Sleeper Awakes by H. G. Wells.
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  Speaker 1: This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in
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  Speaker 1: the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please
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  Speaker 1: visit LibriVox dot org. This recording by James Christopher j
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  Speaker 1: X Christopher at yahoo dot com. When the Sleeper Awakes
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  Speaker 1: by H. G. Wells Preface to the new edition When
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  Speaker 1: the Sleeper Wakes, whose title I have now altered to
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  Speaker 1: The Sleeper Awakes was first published as a book in
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  Speaker 1: eighteen ninety nine, after a serial appearance in The Graphic
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  Speaker 1: and one or two American or colonial periodicals. It is
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  Speaker 1: one of the most ambitious and least satisfactory of my books,
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  Speaker 1: and I have taken the opportunity afforded by this reprinting
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  Speaker 1: to make a number of excisions and alterations. Like most
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  Speaker 1: of my earlier work, it was written under considerable pressure.
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  Speaker 1: There are marks of haste, not only in the writing
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  Speaker 1: of the latter part, but in the very construction of
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  Speaker 1: the story. Except for certain streaks of slovenliness, which seem
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  Speaker 1: to be an almost unavoidable defect in me, there is
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  Speaker 1: little to be ashamed of in the writing of the
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  Speaker 1: opening portion. But it will be fairly manifest to the
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  Speaker 1: critic that instead of being put aside and thought over
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  Speaker 1: thoroughly a leisurely interlude, the ill conceived latter part was
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  Speaker 1: pushed to its end. I was at that time overworked
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  Speaker 1: and badly in need of a holiday. In addition to
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  Speaker 1: various necessary journalistic tasks, I had at hand another book,
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  Speaker 1: Love and Mister Lewisom, which had taken a very much
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  Speaker 1: stronger hold upon my affections than this present story. My
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  Speaker 1: circumstances demanded that one or the other should be finished
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  Speaker 1: before I took any rest, and so I wound up
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  Speaker 1: the Sleeper sufficiently to make it a marketable work, hoping
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  Speaker 1: to be able to revise it before the book printers,
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  Speaker 1: at any rate, got hold of it. But fortune was
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  Speaker 1: against me. I came back to England from Italy only
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  Speaker 1: to fall dangerously ill. And I still remember the infinite
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  Speaker 1: rage and strain of my attempt to put some sort
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  Speaker 1: of finish on my story of Mister Lewisham. With my
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  Speaker 1: temperature at one hundred and two, I couldn't endure the
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  Speaker 1: thought of leaving that book a fragment. I did afterwards
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  Speaker 1: contrived to save it from the consequences of that febrell spit.
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  Speaker 1: Love and mister Lewisham is indeed one of my most
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  Speaker 1: carefully balanced books. But The Sleeper escaped me. It is
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  Speaker 1: twelve years now since The Sleeper was written, and that
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  Speaker 1: young man of thirty one is already to remote for
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  Speaker 1: me to attempt any very drastic reconstruction of his work.
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  Speaker 1: I have played now merely the part of an editorial
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  Speaker 1: elder brother, cut out relentlessly a number of long, tiresome
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  Speaker 1: passages that showed all too plainly the fagged, toiling brain,
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  Speaker 1: the heavy, sluggish, driven pen, and straightened out certain indecisions
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  Speaker 1: at the end. Except for that, I have done no
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  Speaker 1: more than hack here and there at clumsy phrases and repetitions.
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  Speaker 1: The worst thing in the earlier version, and the thing
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  Speaker 1: that rankled most in my mind, was the treatment of
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  Speaker 1: the relations of Helen Woten and Graham. Haste and art
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  Speaker 1: is almost always vulgarization, and I slipped into the obvious
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  Speaker 1: vulgarity of making what the newspaper syndicates call a love
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  Speaker 1: interest out of Helen. There was even a clumsy intimation
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  Speaker 1: that instead of going up in the flying machine to
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  Speaker 1: fight Graham might have given into Ostrong and married Helen.
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  Speaker 1: I have now removed the suggest estion of these uncanny connubialities,
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  Speaker 1: not the slightest intimation of any sexual interest could in
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  Speaker 1: truth have arisen between these two. They loved and kissed
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  Speaker 1: one another, but as a girl and her heroic grandfather
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  Speaker 1: might love and in a crisis kiss, I have found
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  Speaker 1: it possible, without any very serious disarrangement, to clear all
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  Speaker 1: that objectionable stuff out of the story, and so a
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  Speaker 1: little ease my conscience on the score of this ungainly lapse.
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  Speaker 1: I have also, with a few strokes of the pen,
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  Speaker 1: eliminated certain dishonest and regrettable suggestions that the people beat Ostrog.
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  Speaker 1: Mister Graham dies, as all his kind must die, with
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  Speaker 1: no certainty of either victory or defeat. Who will win
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  Speaker 1: Ostrog or the people a thousand years hence that will
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  Speaker 1: still be just the open question we leave today. H. G.
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  Speaker 1: Wells Inda preface to the new edition. When the Sleeper
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  Speaker 1: Awakes This recording by James Christopher j X Christopher at
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  Speaker 1: yahoo dot com.