SOURCE: Parrinder, Patrick. “Wells's Cancelled Endings for ‘The Country of the Blind.’” Science-Fiction Studies 17, no. 1 (March 1990): 71-6.

In the following essay, Parrinder investigates Wells's revisions of the ending of “The Country of the Blind.”

First published in the April 1904 number of the Strand Magazine, “The Country of the Blind” is among Wells's most admired short stories.¹ Together with D. H. Lawrence's “The Woman Who Rode Away” it is one of the finest “lost race” tales in 20th-century English literature. Nevertheless, “The Country of the Blind” has attracted rather cursory critical attention and none of the available accounts is based on a study of Wells's manuscript.

Virtually everyone who has written about the story draws attention to the beauty and thematic significance of its ending. Bernard Bergonzi, in perhaps the most influential and outspoken reading of “The Country of the Blind,” sees it as a “magnificent example of Wells's...