Read The War of the Worlds in English — and understand every line.
Read “The War of the Worlds” by H. G. Wells in English. Tap any word for its meaning, hear how it sounds, and save it to a memory-driven review schedule.
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DICTIONARY
TRANSLATION
apreciar, atesorar
to feel warm affection for; to hold something dear.
Tap a word for its translation and part of speech — then save it to your list.
The opening
How “The War of the Worlds” begins
No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man’s and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water.
With infinite complacency men went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire over matter.
Public domain — the whole book is yours to read in the app.
Vocabulary
Words to know before you start
The 30 words you will meet most often in “The War of the Worlds” at level B2 and above, with how many times each one appears.
- pit
- stare
- presently
- darkness
- smash
- weed
- scarcely
- strike
- flash
- creature
- flame
- lane
- ruin
- rush
- advance
- heap
- terror
- crawl
- steam
- destruction
- altogether
- struggle
- sweep
- perceive
- vanish
- dawn
- vague
- creep
- northward
- mass
The meanings here are the everyday ones. In the reader, tap a word to see the sense this sentence uses.
Grammar
Grammar you will meet in “The War of the Worlds”
How much of each kind of grammar “The War of the Worlds” uses, counted in the sentences the Reader marks: per 10,000 words, compared with the other books in the library.
- Perfect tenses
- Relative clauses
- Phrasal verbs
- Passive voice
- -ing forms and to-infinitives
- Modal verbs
- Reported speech
- Conditionals
Constructions to look for
- Phrasal verb with 'up' and preposition As it did so a second glittering titan built itself up out of the pit.
- Past perfect active The smashed bushes were just as I had left them nearly four weeks ago.
- At/on/in (time) In the afternoon the appearance of the common had altered very much.
Counted the way the Reader shows it: one card per construction in a sentence. Open the book in the Reader and tap a highlighted phrase to see the rule.
Library
What you get while you read
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Tap to translate
Tap any word to see what it means in this exact sentence — with pronunciation and a clear example.
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Save what matters
Add a word and it comes back on a spaced-repetition schedule timed to how memory actually works.
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Grammar in context
Notable structures light up in the text, with a short explanation tied to the sentence you're reading.
About the book
Why The War of the Worlds is a great book to read in English
Cylinders fall on the quiet towns outside London, and what climbs out ends the nineteenth century's confidence overnight. Wells's 1898 invasion novel is reported in calm, precise, journalistic English — which only makes the heat-ray more terrifying.
On LangOrbit you read “The War of the Worlds” with a safety net: the translation is one tap away when a sentence runs long, every word opens its meaning in context and can be saved for spaced-repetition review, and the grammar behind the trickier lines is explained right where you meet it.
Keep reading
More books to read in English
Every title opens with the same dictionary, grammar help, and translation — start reading for free.
The War of the Worlds
Read “The War of the Worlds” by H. G. Wells in English. Tap any word for its meaning, hear how it sounds, and save it to a memory-driven review schedule.
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