The War of the Worlds

First published in 1898, this scientific romance recounts a Martian invasion of southern England as seen by a suburban narrator near Woking. Cylinders land on the common; fighting-machines on stilts burn towns with a heat-ray and choke refugees with black smoke; the narrator is separated from his wife and trapped in a ruined house beside a pit. Military sorties fail; flight toward the coast and a return through emptied London follow. The book is an invasion narrative of imperial reversal, not a treatise on astronomy.

Bound in dark green buckram, cover blocked with a gilt and black design by the artist.