Inside the illustrated edition
Beyond the present
Day and night fold into bands of colour. Five visionary paintings explore the strange distances of Wells’s future.
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The garden’s silent watcher
White marble, green bronze and a rising moon. The future appears beautiful, weathered and unreadable.
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What time leaves behind
A vast green ruin rises over an estuary. Small figures measure the distance between a world and its remains.
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The colour of danger
Black trunks stand against a sky of flame. Sweeping brushwork gives the forest a terrible grandeur.
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At the farthest shore
An immense red sun hangs above still water. A final vision of distance, solitude and deep time.
View artwork detailsRead. Listen. Stay in the story.
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Distinctive voices, expressive narration and words that light up as you listen. Move between reading and listening in the Read Classics app, at your own pace.
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The opening is yours.
The title announcement, introduction and everything through the end of the first chapter, including any intervening preface or dedication, are included free.
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Read and listen in the Read Classics app: get it for Android now; the iPhone app is coming soon. The website has no player and no file downloads.
Beyond a familiar room, an unfamiliar future.
An inventor asks his dinner guests to imagine travelling through time. Wells turns that extraordinary possibility into a story of discovery, uncertainty and questions about the future of human society.
Discover the edition
With an original introduction, chronology and further reading. 5 paintings accompany the story.
Read the complete ebook in the Read Classics app, for Android now and for iPhone soon. The free audio opening is separate from ebook access. This website offers an excerpt from the introduction, not an interactive browser reader.
From the introduction
Around a comfortable dinner table, a man proposes that time is a dimension through which we might travel. His listeners argue, joke and ask for proof. The setting of The Time Machine is reassuringly domestic: armchairs, a bright fire, glasses catching the light. From this small circle of Victorian acquaintances, H. G. Wells opens a prospect almost too large to imagine. The inventor is known only as the Time Traveller, a name that identifies both his achievement and the story he asks others to believe. Before wondering whether the machine could work, notice the scene of persuasion. This is an extraordinary journey presented through the ordinary, uncertain business of listening to someone tell a tale.
An excerpt from the original Read Classics introduction.
Beyond the present
a brilliant arch, in space
Chapter 4 · Painting 1 of 5
The white watcher
the light of the rising moon
Chapter 7 · Painting 2 of 5
A palace out of time
deserted and falling into ruin
Chapter 11 · Painting 3 of 5
The forest in flame
through the black pillars of the nearer trees
Chapter 12 · Painting 4 of 5
The distant shore
the huge hull of the sun, red and motionless
Chapter 14 · Painting 5 of 5
The Time Machine
Pinch or use the zoom controls to look closer. Swipe between paintings.