HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics. 'Looking at these stars suddenly dwarfed my own troubles and all the gravities of terrestrial life.

I thought of their unfathomable distance, and the slow inevitable drift of their movements out of the unknown past into the unknown future.' The narrator of the story, the 'Time Traveller' is an English scientist who invents a machine that he claims can carry a person through time.

Upon testing his machine, the Time Traveller is transported to AD 802,701, a future world where mankind is split between the childlike, gentle Eloi and the brutish Morlocks. When he attempts to return home, he discovers that the Morlocks have stolen his machine and he is stranded.

The Time Machine follows the Time Traveller as he attempts to reclaim his machine from the barbaric Morlocks, transporting himself onward to a world that is 30 million years from his own time.

Here he experiences some of the last living things on the planet as earth is slowly beginning to die. Wells' grim vision of a world in decline is recognised as one of the seminal texts of the science fiction genre, exploring the themes of inequality, class and the relationship between science and society.