Intimate Relations Between Men and Women: the Case of H. G. Wells and

The two-year affair (1908-10) between H. G. Wells and Amber Pember Reeves never quite reached the total 'smash' feared by those close to the pair. Both parties retrieved their positions sufficiently to continue to mix freely in respectable society, despite H. G. Wells's publication late in 1909 of a partly autobiographical novel, Ann Veronica, that chronicled the early stages of the relationship.' The book was published at a critical juncture in the affair, when Reeves, pregnant by Wells and newly married to Rivers Blanco White, was still seeing Wells. St Loe Strachey reviewed the book savagely and cleverly in the Spectator, making clear the connection to the conduct of personal life.2 This was enough to make H. G. Wells back off. Reeves remained married to Blanco White until he died in 1966, bearing two more children. Wells remained married to 'Jane',3 until she died in 1927, albeit that he continued his established pattern of taking serial lovers. Reeves's successor-but-one, Rebecca West, also bore him a child. But tempestuous as that relationship was, it did not achieve the notoriety of H. G. Wells's involvement with Amber Reeves. To a large extent it may be argued that the fuss was a product of circumstance. Amber Reeves was the daughter of Fabian parents. Maud