For the decade before The Time Machine became a best-seller, H. G. Wells was a bright, lower-middle class youth trying to overcome familial pressure to become a shop clerk. His love for books and knowledge led to an ambition to become a science teacher, and a participant in the scientific debates of the late 19th century. In the wake of Darwinian theories, scientific study had changed, but science education had remained behind. Wells's writings as a young man reveal the controversies over science education in a way that will seem familiar to educations today, while at the same time showing Wells as a young writer of wit and perception.