Herbert George Wells and development of English socio-psychological novel: reading of Adelaida Lyubimova's monograph problematics and poetics of H.G.Wells's novels of the 1900s - 1940s

The essay is devoted to the analysis of the monograph of Adelaida Lyubimova, one of the leading specialists on H.G.Wells in Russia of the 1970s- 1990s. In the essay it is shown how the author of the monograph analyses the novels of Wells written by him in the period of the 1900s-1940s, how Dr Lyubimova interprets H.G.Wells‘s novel-making approaches, and the main stress is done on her analysis of the genre of socio-psychological novel, the one which has a very solid and interesting history in English literature, and the one which took aback lovers of Wells‘s social and scientific fantasies. The reading of the monograph helps to see more profoundly not only H.G.Wells‘s role in the development of this genre from the XVIII to the XX century, his following the traditions and his innovations in the genre. It gives chances to see basic structural peculiarities of the genre as a whole, to comprehend more clearly the main force lines‘ of the evolution of the genre. Due to intensive and close reading of Dr Lyubimova‘s monograph the novelistic art of H.G.Wells stands as original phenomenon, multidimensional, striking in its content and form, meaningful both from the point of view of history of literature and of contemporary English novel.