Herbert George Wells, the English author, futurist, essayist, historian, socialist, and teacher, well known for his science fiction works such as 'The War of the Worlds', 'The Time Machine' and 'The Invisible Man', also created one of the first sets of rules for miniatures wargaming and wrote and illustrated a short children's story entitled 'The Adventures of Tommy'.
I have copies of these two rare-ish books by H. G. Wells - the images and galleries used below are from scans of these books.
Little Wars
'Little Wars' was written by H.G.Wells in 1913 and is a set of rules for playing a wargame or 'Kriegsspiel'.
The book is probably the first formal description of a set of rules for a modern miniatures wargame. It includs rules for infantry, cavalry, and artillery (in the form of a toy gun that launches small wooden dowels to knock down enemy soldiers).
The idea of the game came to Wells after a visit by his friend Jerome K. Jerome. After dinner, Jerome began shooting down toy soldiers with a toy cannon and Wells joined in to compete.
The images presented here are from a 1966 reprint of the book. I have included only the figures from this edition and not, at present, the marginal illustrations from the original 1913 edition of the book.
Little Wars - full transcript of the text - quite a long document, so I haven't included all the images and have moved the illustrated example of The Battle of Hook's Farm to its own page, linked below.
Little Wars - The Battle of Hook's Farm
Little Wars - gallery of all images from the book
The Adventures of Tommy
Children's story written and illustrated by H.G.Wells. This edition is No.1279 of a limited edition.
