Title: Scientific Fantasy and Historical Bearing: Plant Writing in The Time Machine and the Boom of Horticulture in Nineteenth-Century Britain

Abstract: Facing the scientific fantasy in The Time Machine, scholars have attempted to trace its intellectual roots in the nineteenth century. The correspondence between plant writing and the boom of horticulture in nineteenth-century Britain provides new evidence to support the view that the novel is rooted in the Victorian era. In the discourse of the nineteenth-century “Botanical Renaissance,” Wells draws on his botanical interests since his childhood to form an exotic botanical world in his novel. In this world, the future garden, characterized by abundant fruits, strange appearance of plants and so on, echoes the development of cultivation techniques in the nineteenth century. In the context of colonization, the backlash of the exotic plants reveals the internal tension between the “national garden” and the “world garden.” Wells projects his historical view of community onto the resolution of the crisis in the “national garden,” thereby expressing his attempt to establish a “world garden” within the empire.

Keywords: H. G. Wells, The Time Machine, plant writing, boom of horticulture, historical view of community

Author: Dingying Wang, Lecturer, Foreign Studies College, Northeastern University, Shenyang, Liaoning, China.

DOI: 10.19967/j.cnki.flc.2026.01.002