Who wrote the 1895 novel "The Time Machine"?

H. G. Wells wrote the 1895 novel The Time Machine. The story follows an unnamed Victorian inventor, called the Time Traveller, who journeys far into Earth’s future and encounters the Eloi and Morlocks.

Wells developed the idea from an earlier 1888 story, “The Chronic Argonauts,” and expanded it into a work that combined scientific speculation with social criticism. The novel imagines humanity divided into two evolved groups, reflecting Victorian concerns about class inequality, industrial labor, and social degeneration.

The book helped popularize deliberate travel through time using a machine, and Wells’s phrase “time machine” became the standard term for such a device. It was first serialized in 1895 before appearing in separate British and American book editions that year. A common mix-up is calling it a full-length novel: it is often classified more precisely as a science-fiction novella, though quiz and publishing references frequently call it a novel.