H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds 1906 — Panicked London Street Crowd

Dread and mass hysteria radiate from this electrifying pen-and-ink scene depicting Londoners in full flight through a crowded urban boulevard. Figures clutch newspapers bearing news of the Martian invasion, their faces twisted in alarm as the dense throng surges forward in blind panic. The loose, energetic linework — characteristic of Henrique Alvim Corrêa's 1906 illustrations for the French edition of H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds — captures the terrifying contagion of mob fear.