The Outline of History - Responses, Rebuttals and Objections

Responses, Rebuttals and Objections

The Outline of History inspired responses from the serious to the parodic.

• In 1921 Algonquin Round Table member Donald Ogden Stewart first reached success with his satire, A Parody Outline of History.
• The Outline of History was praised on publication by E. M. Forster and Beatrice Webb.
• American historians James Harvey Robinson and Carl Becker lauded the Outline and hailed Wells as "a formidable ally".
• In 1923 J. Gresham Machen condemned the book in Christianity and Liberalism as featuring all the philosophical limitations of "Modernism". He records that at the time of his book's writing, the Outline was already experiencing a decline in popularity in the United States.
• In 1925 G. K. Chesterton wrote The Everlasting Man at least partly in reaction to Wells. It disputes his portrayals of human life and civilization as a seamless development (via evolution) from animal life, of Jesus Christ as merely another charismatic leader, and of the Christian Church as one more religious movement like any other.
• In 1926 Hilaire Belloc wrote "A Companion to Mr. Wells’s "Outline of History", a devout Roman Catholic, Belloc was deeply offended by Wells’ treatment of Christianity in The Outline. Wells wrote a short book as a rebuttal called Mr. Belloc Objects to “The Outline of History.” In 1926, Belloc published his reply, Mr. Belloc Still Objects.
• After Wells' death, The Outline was still the object of admiration from historians A. J. P. Taylor (who called it "the best" general survey of history) and Norman Stone, who praised Wells for largely avoiding the Eurocentric and racist attitudes of his time.
• In 1934 Arnold J. Toynbee dismissed the criticism of The Outline of History and praised Wells's work in his A Study of History:

  Mr. H. G. Wells’s The Outline of History was received with unmistakable hostility by a number of historical specialists. ... They seemed not to realize that, in re-living the entire life of Mankind as a single imaginative experience, Mr. Wells was achieving something which they themselves would hardly have dared to attempt ... In fact, the purpose and value of Mr. Wells’s book seem to have been better appreciated by the general public than by the professional historians of the day.

  Further in the text, Toynbee referred to The Outline several times offering his share of criticism but maintaining generally positive view of the book.
• In his autobiography, Christopher Isherwood recalled that when he and W. H. Auden encountered Napoleon's tomb on a 1922 school trip to France, their first reaction was to quote The Outline's negative assessment of the French ruler.
• Wells includes in his recount of evolution of man a mention of the Piltdown Man, a fossil that later, in 1953, was exposed as a forgery.