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in the Thinker's Library (London: C. A. Watts, 1929). However, as the Second World War, which he had prophesied, drew near, he revised subsequent Thinker's Library editions to record its development. The process began in 1934 with an expansion of the last two chapters; in 1938 he added two new chapters, taking events up to the Nazi annexation of Austria; and in 1941 he inserted a further chapter covering the war, which he placed between the two chapters added previously. In 1945, in the final version produced in his lifetime, the seventy-nine-year-old Wells replaced the concluding chapter with two further ones, entitled ‘The Present Outlook for Homo sapiens ’ and ‘From 1940–1944: Mind at the End of its Tether’. It is perhaps a sign of Wells's decline in old age that, despite the promise of the final chapter title, he brought events no further than December 1941, later developments being covered solely in the revised chronological table. The new textual additions were mostly concerned with the early development of the planet and of the human race, but were not sufficiently thorough to note the discovery of the planet Pluto fifteen years previously. The final chapter of the 1945 text, with some minor revisions and new introductorymaterial expressing increased doubt about the future of mankind, was later reprinted as a separate volume, Mind at the End of its Tether (London: Heinemann, 1945).
    The Short History formed the basis of two other titles published during Wells's lifetime. In A Short History of Mankind (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1925), which was intended for school use, E. H. Carter reduced the text from sixty-seven to forty-three short chapters, simplifying its grammar and vocabulary. Carter added different illustrations, time charts, a subject index and a pronouncing index; he removed criticism of European imperialism, added praise of the British Empire and judiciously inserted the phrase ‘let us hope’ in the final paragraph. (The title A Short History of Mankind , or something very similar, had originally been considered for Wells's book, but was judged to have been pre-empted when the American Hendrik Van Loon's world history The Story of Mankind was published in 1921.) In Germany, the last eleven chapters of Wells's Short History were reprinted for students of English, with an introduction and notes in German, as A Short History of Modern Times (Leipzig: Tauchnitz, 1926).
    After Wells's death, his elder son G. P. Wells brought the chronological table up to 1946 for the Thinker's Library edition of 1948. A more thorough revision was carried out by Raymond Postgate and G. P. Wells in 1965, revising Wells's text and reducing it from seventy-one to sixty-six chapters, then adding five new ones to bring events to the Cuba crisis of 1963 (London: Collins, 1965). Twenty-two years later, Philip Ziegler added an introduction and updated the book with a further chapter for An Illustrated Short History of the World (Exeter: Webb & Bower, in association with London: Michael Joseph, 1987).
    The present Penguin Classics edition restores the original 1922 text, which has been completely reset, removing a number of misprints which accumulated in later editions such as ‘defeat’ for ‘defect’ ( Chapter 41 ), ‘Boniface VII’ for ‘Boniface VIII’ ( Chapter 47 ) and ‘Morally’ for ‘Morelly’ ( Chapter 59 ). End-notes have been added, most of them to record where more recent research has altered understanding, others to clarify allusionsor to place Wells's ideas in the context of his work as a whole.
    Various amendments have been made to the text, bringing it into line with Penguin housestyle for greater clarity and consistency. Numbers below 100 have been printed as words, higher numbers up to one million, and measurements, have been printed as numerals. All dates have been printed in the form ‘March 4th 1861’. Capitals have been used