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This is a Literature Review study.

September 10, 2025

“A Certain Amount of Scientific Education”: Science, Sensation, and the Everyman Narrator in the Serialised War of the Worlds (1897)

Key Points

The serialized version presents a fallible and relatable narrator, unlike the later revisions.
In Pearson’s Magazine, the emphasis on layperson experiences enriches the connection to science.
The serialized text empowers working- and middle-class readers to engage with scientific ideas.
Differences in narrative style between editions raise questions about audience targeting by authors.

Abstract

Abstract: This essay compares the 1897 serialised version of The War of the Worlds in Pearson’s Magazine to Wells’s 1898 and 1924 revisions of the text for book publication. I argue that the serialised narrator is fallible, embodied in his responses, relatively nonscientific in his language, and thus far more an everyman than the later texts’ unreliable, clinical, and intellectually dishonest narrator. By highlighting the importance of layperson experiences, Pearson’s serialization offers working- and middle-class readers more empowering affects with which to approach science and raises questions for scholars about how authors shaped their texts for periodicals’ and books’ differing audiences.

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