This project is in large part inspired by Robert M. Philmus (1943-), sf critic and Professor Emeritus of English literature at Concordia University. In 1993, Philimus edited a edition of The Island of Dr. Moreau that has come to be known as the variorum text. In it, Philmus writes that there is not one Dr. Moreau but "three Moreaus," one for each of the three editions of the novel Wells published in his liftime (xxxii). Their differences, though "relatively small" cumulatively produce "divergent nuances of meaning" (xxxv). In writing the Variorum, then, Philmus was not so much looking to produce an authoritative edition as he was interested in mapping Wells' experience of writing and re-writing one of his most celebrated novels.

Broadly speaking, a variorum edition attempts to collate all known variants of a text. It is thus both a bibliographic endeavour and a work of textual criticism, wherein variations and emendations are set side by side so that a reader can track how a text has changes over time.

In this spirit, The Digital Wells Variorum notes not only editorial differences between published editons but, unlike Philmus' Variorum, makes a conscious effort to add critical insight to bibliographic inquiry.

A Note on the Texts

The version of the display text for each novel is recorded next to the title. For example, the main display text for The Time Machine is the 1895 Heinemann edition (v2.). I am working on a functionality to display in-line changes between editions in real time. For now, textual changes are tracked by the Revision tag.

The text itself is scraped from Project Gutenberg and Wikisource.