H G Wells

Boon H G Wells

It is quite probable that the reader does not know of the death of George Boon, and that "remains" before his name upon the title-page will be greeted with a certain astonishment. In the ordinary course of things, before the explosion of the war, the death of George Boon would have been an event-oh! a three-quarters of a column or more in the Times event, and articles in the monthlies and reminiscences. As it is, he is not so much dead as missing. Something happened at the eleventh hour-I think it was chiefly the Admiralty report of the fight off the Falkland Islands-that blew his obituary notices clean out of the papers. And yet he was one of our most popular writers, and in America I am told he was in the "hundred thousand class." But now we think only of Lord Kitchener's hundred thousands. It is no good pretending about it. The war has ended all that. Boon died with his age. After the war there will be a new sort of book-trade and a crop of new writers and a fresh tone, and everything will be different. This is an obituary, of more than George Boon....