By David Y. Hughes

The War of the Worlds in the Yellow Press American versions of the broadcast in 1944 and 1949 again provoked dangerous panics, one in Chile, and a second, which claimed at least 15 lives, in Ecuador.3 Wells sounds rather petulant worrying about his copyright in the face of a major panic, but the fact is that the Mercury Theatre broadcast must have seemed to him to be simply a tiresome Ever since the Mercury Theatre’s repetition of a copyright infringement Halloween prank electrified a million of 40 years earlier. In 1897 and 1898, Americans back in 1938,’ Orson Welles just before book publication, The War is often credited with originating the of the Worlds was serialized twice in invasion from Mars. Actually, of course, unauthorized, lurid versions, one of he performed a brilliant adaptation of a them localized to New York City-like brilliant romance by H. G. Wells, writ- Orson Welles’s-and the other to Bosten 40 years earlier, The War of the ton. The organs of publication were two Worlds. Wells himself was not delighted. of the country’s most aggressive yellow “I am deeply concerned at the effect of journals, the New York Evening Jourthe broadcast,” he cabled. “Totally un- nal and the Boston Po$t, both of which warranted liberties were taken with enlivened their texts with daily sensamy book.” Incidentally, two South tional illustrations like the three that accompany this article.‘ ‘Hadley Cantril, The Invasion from Mars: a Srudy in the Psychology o f Panic. With the CornNow, since this yellow journalism plete Scripf of the Famous Orson Welles Broadcast phase of The War of the Worlds has (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1940). escaped previous notice by historians, pp. 58-9. 2 Quoted by Peter Noble in The Fabulous Orson my purpose here is simply 1 ) to inWelles (London: Hutchinson & Co., Ltd., 1956), quire briefly into the circumstances of p. 117. the newspaper serializations and 2 ) to 3 “Those Men from Mars,” Newsweek. Nov. 27. 1944, p. 89; Time, Feb. 21, 1949, p. 46; New York survey their contents as compared to Times, Feb. 14, 1949. p. I. ‘“Fighters from Mars: the War of the Worlds,” that of the authorized serial text (which Journal, Dec. 15. 1897-Jan. 11, 1898, except Sun- had appeared already in Pearson’s days; “Fighters from Mars: the War of the Worlds Magazine in England and in Cosmo-

Forty years before Orson Welles launched his Martians upon New Jersey, the New York Journal and Boston Post were feeding their readers sensational versions of H . G . Wells’s story.

in and near Boston.” Post, Jan. 9-Feb. 3, 1898.

The Journal carried “Erooklvn Bridee” on Dec. 24 and “Interior of Fighting‘Machi&’’ on Jan. 1 (carried by the Post on Jan. 25); the daily titleart, tripod and fleeing man, was the same in both papers. Hcincmann published the book in England at the end of January and Harper in America at the end of March.

me author is an assistant professor of English at the University of Michigan. H~ read a paper On the subject Of this at the 1966 Association for Education in Journalism history division sessions. +

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politan in America) .5 The immediate circumstances of the newspaper serializations were set forth by Wells early in 1898 in an open letter that he dispatched to America to the Critic. No doubt one of the rarer letters that an author has been goaded into writing, it is quoted here for the first time and quoted in full. The Editors of the Critic: I have received a rather startling Post cutting from the Boston through the Authors’ Clipping Bureau. The cutting is dated Dec. 27, the accompanying invoice is dated Dec. 31, the Boston post-mark is Jan. 7, and it has reached me here today. From it 1 learn that my story “The War of the Worlds” “as applied to New England, showing how the strange voyagers from Mars visited Boston and vicinity,” is now appearing in the Post. This adaptation is a serious infringement of my copyright and has been made altogether without my participation or consent. I feel bound to protest in the most emphatic way against this manipulation of my work in order to fit it to the requirements of the local geography. Yet it is possible that this affair is not so much downright wickedness as a terrible mistake. The story originally appeared simultaneously in the American Cosmopolitan and the British Pearson’s Magazine. Mr. Dewey of the New York Journal called upon me in November last and arranged for its serial republication in the evening edition of that paper. In our agreement (of which I have his signed memorandum) it was stipulated that the publication should be with the consent of the American publishers and that no alterations in the text of the story should be made without my consent. On Dec. 26 1 received a cablegram from the Boston Post making an offer for the serial reproduction of “The War of the Worlds” “as New York Journal.” To this I cabled “Agreed.” And now I find too late that my story has been flaunted before the cultivated public of Boston disguised and disarrayed beyond my imagining. What has been done to it? I fail to see how a rag of conviction can remain in it after this outrage. I do not know what a remote Englishman may do in such

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a matter. At any rate I beg you will give me the opportunity of disavowing any share in this novel development of the local color business. H. G . WELLS Heatherlea, Worcester Park, Surrey, England, 21 Jan., 1898.6 It seems that the wording “as New York Journal” might have suggested to Wells that what the Post was doing for Boston the Journal might already have done for New York. But the idea that one great newspaper would deliberately lie to him and that another would deliberately trick him was perhaps more than a “remote Englishman,” unacquainted with American newspaper enterprise, could have been expected to imagine. W h a t the newspapers wanted was circulation, of course. In September of 1897 Arthur Brisbane had assumed the editorship of the Journal under the now famous agreement linking his salary to circulation, and he was developing the techniques which, aided by the rising fever for war with Spain, were to boost sales within a year from a hundred thousand to a m i l l i ~ n .Similarly, ~ the Post was rapidly building u p the largest morning circulation in the country.8 And simply and solely from the point of view of circulation The War of the Worlds would be a good bet for two reasons. The first was John Brisben Walker. As editor of Cosmopolitan, he had achieved a spectacular success because, as one admirer put it, “he has introduced the newspaper ideas of timeliness and dignified sensationalism into periodical l i t e r a t ~ r e . ”If ~ Walker liked April-Dec.. 1897. respectively in vols. 2-3 and in vols. 22-24. Cosmo Rowe’s illustrations gave the newspapers their model for the Martian tripods. SVol. 29 (March 1898), p. 184. 7 Will Irwin, “Yellow Journalism.” in Edwin H. Ford and Edwin Emery, eds.. Highlights in the Hlstory of the American Press (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1954). pp. 277-8. 8 Frank Luther Mott. American Journalism, a History: 1690-1960. 3rd ed. (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1962). p. 560. DQuoted in Frank Luther Mott. A History of American Magazlnes: 1885-1905 (Cambridge. Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1957). p. 482.

the story for his audience, it was probably a good choice for the similar, if much lcss litcrate, audience of the sensational newspapers. Thc second indication that The War of ~ l r e Worlds might pull circulation would come with a glance at its ingredients. While war with Spain was only a splendid possibility, here was a war indeed. hlany astronomers thought the Martian "canals" to be artificial, and Percival Lowell had recently staked his reputation on the inference that Martian civilization must far surpass our

own.'" Yet-rather curiously-no one before Wells had conceived that these alien intelligences might have designs on the earth. Thus, The War of the Worlds is the original tale of extraterrestrial invasion by bug-eyed monsters." Wells's Martians, to be more exact, are a sort of big leathery octopus or simple cerebral sac endowed with tentacles and possessing an awesomely advanced weaponry. Incidentally, they are vampires. Yet Wells rationalized all these attributes in up-to-date scientific language.

ID Percival Lowell. Mars (Boston: Iloughton. hliRlin and Company, 1R95). pp. 208-9. 1' Mark R. Hillegas. "The First Invasions from Mars." Michlgan Alumnus Quarlerly Review, 66: 107-12 (Winter 1960). l1 Mott. American Journallsm, p. 539. Besides scareheads. Illustrations and pseudoscience. Molt lists sympathy with the "underdog" and the use of the Sunday supplemen1 as the five identifying features of yellow journalism.

Nothing could be more adaptable to the requirements of yellow journalism (as listed by Mott): the scarehead, the screaming illustration, the appeal to the pseudoscientific.'* How adaptable, may be seen from the three drawings reproduced with this article including not

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Here are a few samples, taken almost at random, of the more human types -according to the caption-by Mar- of scenes which were deleted from Costian “mind power” ( a bit of pseudo- mopolitan. science of the illustrator’s very own, it The first is a sample of commonplace would seem, since no trace of this humor. After fainting during the lightmagical Martian faculty appears in the ning-like carnage of the initial encountstory itself). Thus, the escalation of er with the Martians, the hero comes sensationalism proceeded apace. to and stumbles onto a group of people It was good business all round. The as he dashes into town: Cosmopolitan version was manipulated “What news from the common?” I by the Journal; the Journal version in said. turn was manipulated by the Posr; and “Ain’t yer just been there?” asked the afterwards both papers undertook a seman. “People seem fair silly about the quel, “Edison’s Conquest of Mars” by common,” said the woman over the Garrett P. Serviss and Thomas Alva gate. “What’s it all about?” Edison (so the title-piece stated), deIt seemed impossible to make these picting the swift revenge of Yankee inpeople grasp a terror upon which my genuity against the Red Planet.13 mind even could not retain its grip of ,Coming now to the question of the realization. “Haven’t you heard of the men from Mars?”said I. texts themselves, the newspapers in “Quite enough,” said the woman over general aimed at a detailed account of the gate; “thanks,” and all three of painful and eccentric horrors having a them laughed. 14 special immediacy and “reality” for New Yorkers (or Bostonians) on ac- The newspapers likewise deleted the count of the home locale. If they did following passage. The commonplace not attempt a hoax, it was probably be- humor broadens: cause they did not think they could “Ain’t they got any necks, then?” bring it off; or perhaps they preferred asked a third [soldier] abruptly, a little, the continuing notoriety promised by contemplative, dark man smoking a several weeks of daily serialization. pipe. At any rate-aside from the meI repeated my description. chanics of substituting American lo“Octopuses,” said he; “that’s what I cales for the English one-the papers calls ’em. Talk about fishers of menfighters of fish it is this time.” 1) ruthlessly cut passages that deviated “It ain’t no murder killin’ beasts like from the straight chronicle of death that,” said the first speaker. and destruction, and 2) interpolated “Why not shell the damn things long passages enumerating fresh Marstrite off and finish ’em?” said the little tian marvels and atrocities. The addidark man. “You carn’t tell what they tions were mostly the work of the Post; might do.”16 the preliminary task of deletion was acAt another level, Wells might state the complished mostly by the Journal. A reader of The War of the Worlds persistence of the commonplace as an today is attracted by Wells’s cunning underlying psychological datum. This and deliberate admixture of normality passage, too, was deleted: with calamity, familiarity with grotesMy terror had fallen from me like a querie, the human with the bizarre. as if something turned garment To the Journal, however, the ordinary, ”Started Jan. 12 and Feb. 6, respectively. Edcommonplace scenes were padding to collaboration Is more than doubtful since be cut as fast as they appeared in the son’s the Post claims it but tbe Journal does not. text, and in the earlier installments the May 1897. p. 6. cutting must approach fifty per cent. June 1897, p. 216. only the two scenea of violence but al-

so the cutaway of the machine directed

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The War of the Worlds INTEIilOK OF T€IE MARTIAN FIGHTING MAClIlNE.

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. _ oxc view . .. over ana* me point altered abruptly. There was no sensible transition from one state of mind to the other. I was immediately the self of every day again-a decent, ordinary citizen. l h e silent common, the impulse of my flight, the starting flamer was as if it were a dream.lG

Finally, here is a deletion where the principle of the persistence of the commonplace has achieved the level of a basic sociological datum:

...

The most extraordinary thing was the dovetailing of the commonplace habits of our social order, with the first beginnings of the series of events that May 1897. p. 6. 161d.. p. 8. But the Journal reidned tho vcond Mntence, Dec. 17, p. 11. lo

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was 10 topple tnat social order heacllong. If, on Friday night, you had taken n pair of compasses and drawn a circle with a radius of five miles, . . I doubt if you would have had one human being outside it, . . whose emotions or habits were at all affected by the newcomers.17

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Such are some of the more strictly human types of passages cut by the papers with the effect of diminishing the artistic (novelistic) side of the work in favor of a sort of directory of terrors. ,. . - ._ . .. * NlOreOVer, 11 was a WmIIent wnlcn could be administered with a minimum loss of physical continuity because of the loose structure of The War of the Worlds. Since the story is narrated throughout by a supposed eyewitness who speaks in the first person, it was

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only necessary to retain his more bloodcurdling adventures but to excise the “padding” of commonplace observation, speculation and dialogue.

ly human chapters in The W a r of thc Worlds first saw print in the g:i~dy newspaper versions. Just as the loosc, first person narrative structure of the story cnriblcd the Jortrriczl to cut novelistic matter out. so, too, it enabled the Post to pump “yellow” matter in. Actually, the Jozrrrid pioneered the latter procedure, too, in a modest way. The trick was to seize a moment when the hlartinns were entering a town, and. ignoring the fact that the narrator was running for his life, require him to describe the dcstruction of the community tree by tree and brick by brick. Doubtless thc childlike audience of these papers ncvcr noticed that the narrator was rncanwhilc stranded in a state of suspended nnirnation. Such interpol,‘I t‘ions wcrc one hundred per cent the insipiration of the newspapers. In this fashion, the lortrml intcrpolat-

Turning now to the equally large category of additions, it should be noted to begin with that Wells himself wrote a major interpolation for the Jourrinl and the subsequently published bookthe only authorized departure from Cosnopolitarz-the episode of the drunken artilleryman who proposes in about five thousand words that men recapture the earth by first disappc:iring into drains and scwers.*s Both papers printed it in virtually the form in which it was soon to appear in the published book. They did so presumably because it occurs towards the end of the story and neither paper bothered to edit extensively after the first half. It is ironic that thus one of the most pure-

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The War of the Worlds ed a bird’s-eye view of the wanton destruction of Brooklyn Bridge (an illustration of which accompanies this article) and of other Manhattan landmarks. It is a short addition compared to several in the Post but already indicates the distinctive types of targets favored by the Martians. I d o not refer to the bridge, which, after all, might have some military potential. During their New York outing, the Martians defaced or destroyed numerous specimens of five types of targets of a very different sort: of churches, St. John’s Cathedral, St. Patrick’s Cathedral and Grace Church, “carrying out the Martians’ purpose that the people forget their God”; of institutions of learning, Columbia University, whereat “priceless manuscripts from the library were blown over the ground like dead leaves”; of historic mansions, many along Fifth Avenue; of historic monuments, Grant’s Tomb and the patriotic statues in Madison Square and Union Square, “as if the Martians wished that the people forget their heroes”; and, finally, of government buildings, the city hall.I9 The Bostonian Martians, too, it could be shown, everywhere attacked the same five types of targets. Only they found many more of them because Boston is so rich in history. “The Martians, in going from Concord to Lexington,” the Post asserted, “had in a general way followed the route which the English soldiers had taken in 1775.”*0 And both Concord and Lexington of course contained almost limitless fodder for the heat ray. Concord offered, for ex“ A notation from Wells to his typist on the margin of the manuscript of The War of the Worlds states that the pages of the artilleryman episode are “wanted to send to America (where the story is now appearing in a New York paper).” The manuscript is in the Wells Archive of the University of Illinois. For a critical edition of it, see the author’s unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, “An Edition and a Survey of H. 0.Wells’ The Wur of the Worlds,” University of Illinois, 1962. Dec. 25, p. 9. *Jan. 13. p. 5. Ibid. Ibld.

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ample, the statues of the “Minute Man” and of the f i s t redcoat who fell under “the shot that was heard around the world”; and then there were the homes, among others, of Emerson, Thoreau and Hawthorne; and there were several churches and the historic city hall and library.2l In Lexington there was more of the same. But a quotation of some length alone can give the effect of such a sheer bulk of hackneyed detail: As they entered Lexington by way of Monument Street the heat ray was turned on with deadly effect. The k t building to be destroyed was St. Bridget’s Catholic Church, which crumbled into ruins as if it were a pile of match wood. On they came to the Common, around which clustered so many associations dear to the hearts of the people of Lexington. The tall spire of the Unitarian Church, at the western side of the Common, attracted immediate attention. The heat ray flashed on it, and the wooden spire and building became a mass of flame. On the southern border of the Common stood the Congregational Church. It was built of stone, but it collapsed as quickly as if it had been a house of cards. All the famous memorials on the Common disappeared in the common [!I ruin. The old monument on the west side erected in 1797, had been regarded as one of the oldest memorials of the revolution in the country. It was of granite, about twenty feet high, and the inscription was by the Rev. Jonas Clark, the patriot priest. The heat ray struck the shaft and it shivered into atoms. To the rear of the monument was the stone vault into which the remains of Lexington’s martyrs to freedom were transferred on the sixtieth anniversary of their death. At the touch of the heat ray the vault split open and the resting place of the dead became a funeral pyre.**

And there is much, much more. Afterwards, the Martians went on to Waltham and finally to Boston, repeating their unholy depredations as they marched. In these industrial centers,

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too, they destroyed factories, railroads and shipping. The Martians of the sensational newspapers are simply the antichrist rampant, and the Boston readers’ appetite for such fare may well have been great. Yet it makes a bloodless narrative, The editors felt the need of a blow struck for humanity, something spectacular and military-and particularly SO since the Martians finally succumb quite tamely to terrestrial disease germs, against which their systems have no defenses. However, Wells had provided at least the beginnings of a bloody military action in his London version, describing how an armored naval ram smashed two of the tripods as they waded offshore near the Thames estuary. The Post liked the idea enough to use it twice, once with the Katahdin (the only ram then in the U.S. fleet) and in the next installment with the Kearsarge, our biggest and latest battleship (not completed, actually, until later in 1898).23 Both ships sank with all hands, of course, but not before inflicting heavy damage. Then came the climax. An undamaged tripod still wading about Boston Harbor happened to turn its heat ray on Governor’s Island, the ammunition dump. Honeycombed with caves full of high explosives, the island blew to smithereens, smashing the tripod, “Samsonlike,” amid the debris and raising a fifty foot tidal wave which hit the waterfront with a regular insurance inventory of damage^.^' It was left to the next installment to itemize the destruction of the interior of the city-rather anticlimacticallyafter which the remaining half of the story was allowed to take care of itself except for the perfunctory editing of English names. Both newspapers probably felt that few new readers could be attracted while the old ones were safe-

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ly hooked. Or maybe some poor alcoholic hack had simply run out of steam. At any rate, thus ends this chronicle of the f i s t Martians in America. In the publishing history of The War of the Worlds, the affair is no more than a queer episode and an odd foreshadowing of the events of 40 years later, when broadcasting so far outstripped the newspapers in immediacy of impact that people imagined thatin a matter of half an hour-the Martians landed, erected their tripods and wiped out thousands of troops deployed between them and New York City while they were reported in all these activities by ever-vigilant CBS. In the history of American journalism, it is a garish episode considering the later fame of the victimized H. G. Wells-and all the more garish for being forgotten for 70 years. In the history of yellow journalism, it must have been a rather characteristic episode. The yellow journals systematically distorted fact to suit a melodramatic outlook, until, as Will Irwin remarked: “From this to outright falsehood was but a step, taken without perception by men no longer capable of seeing the This refers to truth to fact, truth to the news. The idea of “truth’’ in a piece of fiction-the idea that fiction can be falsified-would be far harder for such men to see. Besides, hadn’t they bought the story? And didn’t they own it? And who ever heard of this H. C. Wells anyway?26 za Jan. 20, p. 5; Jan. 21, p. 5. For ship data, see Fred T. Jane, All the World’s Fighting Ships (London: Sampson, Low, Marston and Co., Ltd., 1904). pp. 203, 222. Jan. 21, p. 5. 2t In Ford and Emery,o p . cft., p. 219. =The Post’s daily title-pieces credited “ H. C. Wells” from start to finish (see illustration). The Journal started with “H. G.” but then misprinted “H. C.” on Dcc. 18 and thereafter.

over all the children of Pride is the Prms.-KIPLING