Catherine Wells

Catherine Wells (née Amy Catherine Robbins; 8 July 1872 – 6 October 1927) was an English writer and poet. Following the death of her father, she undertook degree study in order to become a teacher. She was a student of H. G. Wells at the Tutorial College in Holborn, and they married on 27 October 1895. The couple were known to their friends as H. G. and Jane. They had two sons: George Philip (born 1901) and Frank Richard (born 1903). The Times described Catherine Wells as "her husband's devoted friend and assistant", and "one of the very few transcribers who could read the odd mixture of longhand and shorthand in which he wrote his books", adding that she showed a business acumen which supported her husband. Her own literary output, they wrote, "was necessarily restricted by her domestic responsibilities". Reviewing her stories (published posthumously in The Book of Catherine Wells), Katherine Anne Porter wrote that Catherine Wells' writing was partly a reaction against her identity being subsumed to domestic life and overshadowed by H. G. Wells. Porter argued that:this indefatigable woman asked for one thing more. She asked for one fragment of her mind to use as she liked. She resolutely set herself to write... [and] the stories offer a strange contrast to the portrait her husband gives. The Civil & Military Gazette wrote that "For lightness of touch: power of making her readers see what she sees: and almost uncanny insight, these short stories can scarcely be surpassed".

Death and legacy Catherine Wells died from cancer on 6 October 1927. Her funeral at Golders Green Crematorium He had based this on the secular ceremony script created by humanist and educationist F. J. Gould. Attendees included George Bernard Shaw and Arnold Bennett. In an obituary in The Times, Catherine Wells was described as having been "an admirable hostess... [with] a pretty sense of humour":Nor was her benevolence confined to her home, which she made an abiding centre of harmony and good-will. For she was always ready to help any lame dog over a stile in the most tactful and unobtrusive manner.