Abbenhuis, MaartjeHarrison, Michelle2022-10-062022-10-062022https://hdl.handle.net/2292/61525In 1897, H. G. Wells’ scientific romance The War of the Worlds was serialised in Pearson’s Magazine in England and Cosmopolitan in the United States of America. From the moment of its publication, the story’s success was almost immediate. The tale generated widespread attention within the English-language popular press, not least because this was one of the first instances in which a trained scientist integrated their scientific knowledge into a fictional and literary context, opening exciting new possibilities in fiction and in popular perception. Since its publication, scholars have focused on the story’s cultural and literary contexts; more specifically, the tale has been interpreted and analysed as a commentary on British imperialism and fin-de-siècle anxieties. Yet, few academics have examined the popular press’s response to Wells’ Martian tale around the time of its publication. This paper explores how English-language print media across the British Empire and the Unites States responded to – and engaged with – the scientific material presented in Wells’ The War of the Worlds between 1897 and 1913. Through an analysis of the print media’s fascination with the story, this thesis argues that the Anglo-American popular press regarded the story as a contribution to contemporary scientific conversations. This discussion also sheds light on how Victorian science fiction offers a different angle on the institutionalization, mobilisation, and legitimation of scientific knowledge in the late-nineteenth century and early-twentieth century.Items in ResearchSpace are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.https://researchspace.auckland.ac.nz/docs/uoa-docs/rights.htmhttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/nz/Thesis2022-09-05Copyright: the authorhttp://purl.org/eprint/accessRights/OpenAccess