338 pages. Translated from the French by Daphne Woodward. A bookplate has been attached head and tail with sticky tape to the front end paper, making staining inevitable; the head's outer edge is bumped. Overall a clean, unmarked and solid copy, though obviously second hand. "...H. G. Wells: Prophet of Our Day appears four years after his death in 1946. Poland-born Antonina Vallentin, a naturalized Frenchwoman, has two qualifications for the job: 1) she knew Wells, 2) she is practiced in writing books about famous men (e.g., Leonardo da Vinci, Heinrich Heine, Gustav Stresemann, Mirabeau, Goya). With H. G. Wells, she comes to grips with her first eccentric Briton-and emerges from the struggle wearing the pained, puzzled expression of a fighter who has been repeatedly but deftly rabbit-punched. Who Goes There? The English, notes harassed Biographer Vallentin, look upon Alice in Wonderland, with its "strong undercurrent of cruelty," as an ideal book for children. But how could even the English have missed the "curiously sadistic strain" that she found in some of Wells's very first work, his fancy for cataclysmic upheavals and devastating horrors? Biographer Vallentin wonders. And yet, to all appearances, he was a hearty, jovial man, bursting with a robust humor that Miss Vallentin tries in vain to reflect, and inspired with a sense of duty to mankind that she manages to get across very well." (Review Time magazine 1950)