Shadow Lovers: The Last Affairs of H. G. Wells

Nearing 70, and in what would be the last decade of his life, H.G. Wells fell in love at least three times - once with the much younger Baroness Budberg, and soon thereafter with two well-born Americans, Constance Coolidge and Martha Gelhorn, 25 and 40 years his junior respectively. These would constitute what Wells himself described as his last flounderings towards the wife idea , and demonstrate in many ways that Wells was driven less by his considerable intelligence than by his obsession to find his ideal lover - what he called his lover-shadow . This study looks at this very personal side of H.G. Wells. The self-proclaimed Don Juan was said to have radiated energy: intellectual, emotional, physical and sexual. Drawing on papers made public by the Wells estate, the author documents Wells’ relationship with each of these femme fatales and paints a vivid portrait of the early part of the 20th century in London, Paris and the US.