Remembering Simon James
Not only Wellsians but members of the scholarly community at large have been shocked by the sudden death of our Vice-President Simon J. James from cancer at the age of 54. Simon was Professor of Victorian Literature at Durham University, and foremost among his many contributions to Wells studies is his book Maps of Utopia (Oxford University Press, 2012), published during his tenure as editor of the Wellsian. In all, Simon was responsible for seven issues of our journal, from 2009 for 2015, and later for setting up and maintaining its online archive. He also organised one of our most memorable annual conferences, at Durham University in 2014.
That conference marked the centenary of what Wells had all too optimistically called The War That Will End War, and the title that Simon chose for it was ‘When the Lamps Went Out.’ This now takes on a new and most unwelcome resonance, since in Simon we have lost one of the leading lights in Wells studies, and one from whom – when he had put his departmental administrative responsibilities behind him – much more might have been expected.
Simon was such a long-serving and loyal committee member, frequently travelling down to London before it became possible to attend our meetings remotely, that it is hard to remember when he first joined our Society. However, he figures prominently (next to his near-namesake Professor Edward James) in the group photograph from our 1998 War of the Worlds centenary conference that appears in John Hammond’s Short History of the Society. His first contribution to the Wellsian (published in 2001) was a detailed reassessment of the Wells-Gissing literary friendship, and his first book Unsettled Accounts (2003) was dedicated to George Gissing.
When I was looking for someone to assist me in editing the 17 Wells titles produced by Penguin Classics in the early 2000s, Simon was the obvious choice. He did a wonderful job, and the Penguin texts of Love and Mr Lewisham, Kipps, The History of Mr Polly and The New Machiavelli are now among his memorials. He wrote many other essays on Wells, and spoke at conferences in the United States and elsewhere. At the same time he devoted his energies not only to his students in Durham University’s English Department but to numerous other local ventures. He chaired the research team for the Durham Commission on Creativity in Education sponsored by the Arts Council, took a leading role in the Durham Book Festival, and conducted a reading group in the city’s prison.
Simon was ebullient, unfailingly enthusiastic, and, it sometimes seemed, inexhaustible. He had a huge enjoyment of life – including the fortunes of his favourite football club Arsenal – and this made him a welcome companion wherever he went. We were delighted to see him in London on several recent occasions, and above all at our 2024 Annual General Meeting when he spoke on ‘Wells and the Fin-de-Siècle’, a talk based on his chapter in the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of H.G. Wells. It was on that occasion that he became one of our Vice-Presidents, an honour that was long overdue but that, thankfully, we did not leave until it was too late. The Society is much the poorer for his loss, and he will not be forgotten by any of us. We send our deepest sympathies to his wife and family.
Patrick Parrinder