The first of our monthly specials! In this week’s episode, Olivia revisits her conversation with the editors of The Open Heart & Short Stories by Catherine Wells, Patrick Parrinder and Emelyne Godfrey. Recorded at The London Book Fair, this episode is full of insights and revelations about the often overlooked authorial work of H.G. Wells’s wife.

The Open Heart is one of the latest books to come out in our Beyond & Within series. It collates Catherine Wells’s previously published work alongside her unfinished novella, ‘The Open Heart’, which has never before been published!

Thank you to our guests Patrick & Emelyne. The Open Heart is now available to order through our website. 

Patrick Parrinder is Emeritus Professor of English at the University of Reading and President of the H.G. Wells Society .He is the author of many books on H.G. Wells, science fiction and modern literature, and is General Editor of the 12-volume Oxford History of the Novel in English (2011–24).

Emelyne Godfrey has a PhD from Birkbeck College. She is author of several books on the long nineteenth century including Mrs Pankhurst’s Bodyguard: On the Trail of ‘Kitty’ Marshall and the Met Police ‘Cats’ (The History Press, 2023). She writes widely on women’s history, crime, science fiction and the supernatural.

Catherine Wells (1872–1927), born Amy Catherine Robbins, worked as a teacher and studied at Tutorial College, Holborn where she met and later married H.G. Wells. She is regarded as a great supporter of her husband’s literary outpourings, while she was in fact herself a serious writer, quietly creating her own stories and poems, long-neglected until now.

A big thank you to Claire Cartwright and Carol Goodwin at Novocon for inspiring our Desert Island Books segment!

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Music is an extract of Sunbeams by Allen Stroud, from his Fractal Series album, licensed courtesy of fpl-digital 2025.

This podcast is hosted and sometimes narrated by Beatrix Ambery (also audio editor), Olivia Jackson (also podcast coordinator) and Nick Wells (also producer).

Chosen from hundreds of wonderful tales, short stories such as these are selected by our short window open submission process, giving opportunities to writers of all levels of experience, culture and location. Look out for our submission announcements, and see the full list here: flametreepublishing.com/gothic-fantasy-book-series-list.html

Our full range of thematic short stories, epic tales, mythology and folklore titles are available at all good bookstores, online and in retail, and at flametreepublishing.com

Flame Tree Publishing, Independent Publisher of the Year 2024, British Fantasy Society. Beautiful Books, Timeless Storytelling, Fresh Perspectives.

The Flame Tree Myth and Fiction podcast is created and © copyright 2025 Flame Tree Publishing Ltd.