Criticism > Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism > The Time Machine, H. G. Wells - David J. Lake (essay date March 1979)
The Time Machine, H. G. Wells - David J. Lake (essay date March 1979)
David J. Lake (essay date March 1979)
SOURCE: Lake, David J. “The White Sphinx and the Whitened Lemur: Images of Death in The Time Machine.” Science Fiction Studies 6, no. 1 (March 1979): 77-84.
[In the following essay, Lake considers Wells's use of imagery in The Time Machine.]
There is widespread agreement that The Time Machine is H. G. Wells' finest scientific romance; many critics would go further and call it the best of all his fictions. A sample remark is that of V. S. Pritchett in The Living Novel: “Without question The Time Machine is the best piece of writing. It will take its place among the great stories of our language. Like all excellent works it has meanings within its meaning. …”1 Pritchett here indicates a main reason for The Time Machine's greatness: its richness of suggestion. Bernard Bergonzi, in one of the most detailed studies so far of the novel, has emphasized...
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- Introduction
- Principal Works
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Criticism
- Bernard Bergonzi (essay date 1960)
- Robert M. Philmus (essay date May 1969)
- Jean-Pierre Vernier (essay date 1971)
- Alex Eisenstein (essay date 1972)
- William G. Niederland (essay date spring-summer 1976)
- Alex Eisenstein (essay date July 1976)
- Patrick Parrinder (essay date November 1976)
- David J. Lake (essay date March 1979)
- Mark M. Hennelly, Jr. (essay date summer 1979)
- Frank Scafella (essay date November 1981)
- John Huntington (essay date 1982)
- Robert J. Begiebing (essay date fall 1984)
- Veronica Hollinger (essay date July 1987)
- Kathryn Hume (essay date spring 1990)
- David C. Cody (essay date fall 1993)
- Bruce David Sommerville (essay date winter 1994)
- Patrick Parrinder (essay date 1995)
- John S. Parrington (essay date October 1997)
- Jan Hollin (essay date 1999)
- Martin T. Willis (essay date July 1999)
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