The Sleeper Awakes

The Sleeper Awakes, by H.G.
Wells

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Title: The Sleeper Awakes A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper
Wakes
Author: H.G. Wells
Release Date: April 26, 2004 [EBook #12163]
Language: English
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THE SLEEPER AWAKES
A Revised Edition of "When the Sleeper Wakes"

H.G. WELLS
1899

PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION
When the Sleeper Wakes, whose title I have now altered to The Sleeper
Awakes, was first published as a book in 1899 after a serial appearance
in the Graphic and one or two American and colonial periodicals. It is
one of the most ambitious and least satisfactory of my books, and I
have taken the opportunity afforded by this reprinting to make a
number of excisions and alterations. Like most of my earlier work, it
was written under considerable pressure; there are marks of haste not
only in the writing of the latter part, but in the very construction of the
story. Except for certain streaks of a slovenliness which seems to be an
almost unavoidable defect in me, there is little to be ashamed of in the
writing of the opening portion; but it will be fairly manifest to the critic
that instead of being put aside and thought over through a leisurely
interlude, the ill-conceived latter part was pushed to its end. I was at
that time overworked, and badly in need of a holiday. In addition to
various necessary journalistic tasks, I had in hand another book, Love
and Mr. Lewisham, which had taken a very much stronger hold upon
my affections than this present story. My circumstances demanded that
one or other should be finished before I took any rest, and so I wound
up the Sleeper sufficiently to make it a marketable work, hoping to be
able to revise it before the book printers at any rate got hold of it. But
fortune was against me. I came back to England from Italy only to fall
dangerously ill, and I still remember the impotent rage and strain of my
attempt to put some sort of finish to my story of Mr. Lewisham, with
my temperature at a hundred and two. I couldn't endure the thought of
leaving that book a fragment. I did afterwards contrive to save it from
the consequences of that febrile spurt--Love and Mr. Lewisham is
indeed one of my most carefully balanced books--but the Sleeper
escaped me.
It is twelve years now since the Sleeper was written, and that young

man of thirty-one is already too remote for me to attempt any very
drastic reconstruction of his work. I have played now merely the part of
an editorial elder brother: cut out relentlessly a number of long
tiresome passages that showed all too plainly the fagged, toiling brain,
the heavy sluggish driven pen, and straightened out certain indecisions
at the end. Except for that, I have done no more than hack here and
there at clumsy phrases and repetitions. The worst thing in the earlier
version, and the thing that rankled most in my mind, was the treatment
of the relations of Helen Wotton and Graham. Haste in art is almost
always vulgarisation, and I slipped into the obvious vulgarity of
making what the newspaper syndicates call a "love interest" out of
Helen. There was even a clumsy intimation that instead of going up in
the flying-machine to fight, Graham might have given in to Ostrog, and
married Helen. I have now removed the suggestion of these uncanny
connubialities. Not the slightest intimation of any sexual interest could
in truth have arisen between these two. They loved and kissed one
another, but as a girl and her heroic grandfather might love, and in a
crisis kiss. I have found it possible, without any very serious
disarrangement, to clear all that objectionable stuff out of the story, and
so a little ease my conscience on the score of this ungainly lapse. I have
also, with a few strokes of the pen, eliminated certain dishonest and
regrettable suggestions that the People beat Ostrog. My Graham dies,
as all his kind must die, with no certainty of either victory or defeat.
Who will win--Ostrog or the People? A thousand years hence that will
still be just the open question we leave to-day.
H.G. WELLS.

CONTENTS
I. INSOMNIA
II. THE TRANCE