‘With envious eyes’: Rabbit-poaching and class conflict in H. G. Wells’s The Time Machine and The Island of Doctor Moreau

What is it about?

Imagery of rabbits and poaching appear throughout H. G. Wells's writing, but remain overlooked in scholarly criticism. This article, by analysing Wells's representations of rabbit-poaching, first considers how nineteenth-century histories of industrialisation and game-crime shape his science fiction. The article then explores tensions and contradictions between these representations. Wells both demonises and sympathises with the figure of the rabbit-poacher. By analysing this paradox, the article provides further insight into the class confusion that recent criticism perceives to characterise Wells's writing in this period.

Featured Image