Time Travel to the Past

[steepholm]

"What is the first example of a story in which people travel in time to the past?"

This question came up in a seminar today, and I was embarrassed not to be able to give a better answer. I couldn't think of any example from folklore. There are plenty of people who have an enchanted sleep and wake at some point in the far future - something that resembles time travel - but of course they never travel into the past that way. The only way of seeing (and perhaps conversing with) figures from the past is to summon their ghosts, or to visit the underworld.

H. G. Wells came to mind, of course, but neither in the "The Chronic Argonauts" (1888) nor in The Time Machine (1895) does the protagonist travel into the past of his own world. The most he does is to return to the present from his future travels.

It's been said that the first time-travel stories for children are Kipling's Puck of Pook's Hill and Nesbit's The Story of the Amulet, both published in 1906. I'm inclined to award Nesbit the bays here, since Kipling's is really just a particularly fancy and extended example of ghost-summoning. But when Nesbit invented travel into the past for children, no doubt taking a hint from her friend Wells, whom she credits with a name-check, was she also inventing it tout court? I find it hard to believe.

I'm sure the SF buffs here will be able to put me straight.

Comments

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

I'd be a bit surprised if Merlin-- though perhaps not White's Merlin-- had not appeared on Doctor Who at some point in the past 50 years.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

If not, they've missed a trick.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Thank you. I don't think anyone had mentioned the Poe or the Edward Page Mitchell.

[wolfinthewood.livejournal.com]

I found the Poe quite interesting, though it seems to me to hover between being a time travel story and a story of reincarnation.

Do you know the Irish story of Nera, which I believe dates from the early Middle Ages? That is remarkably close to being a story of travel into an alternative future - which then, owing to the actions of the protagonist, is prevented from happening. A weird tale, and way earlier than anything else I can think of along these lines. It is not a story of time travel into the past, though.

I liked the passage from Machiavelli.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

No, I'd not come across that - thank you.

What a casket of treasures this thread has opened up! In some ways the stories that aren't quite time travel are as interesting as those that are, hinting at different ways of thinking about our relationship with the past.

[harvey-rrit.livejournal.com]

I think it should count. Scrooge didn't alter anything, but the trip did change his life.

[karinmollberg.livejournal.com]

Have no idea but may I suggest, going over to http://davidnessle.wordpress.com/ and ask? Those guys (ex-Sf-Club of Scandinavia and some more) will know or find out for you, for sure. Also, they´re often good fun, I find. You can trust everyone there to be able to communicate in good English, too.

[coyotegoth.livejournal.com]

Christmas Carol?

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

The Doctor _is_ Merlin:
http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Battlefield_%28TV_story%29

[steer.livejournal.com]

Good question -- list here might be useful.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_time_travel_science_fiction
Christmas Carol as someone just said.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Well, that makes a lot of sense.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

It's definitely a contender. I suppose it depends on whether you see what the Ghost of Christmas Past shows Scrooge as involving travel to the past, or merely a vision of the past. Then again, I'm undecided as to how sharp a distinction that is!

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Thank you.

[heliopausa.livejournal.com]

:D

[heliopausa.livejournal.com]

This was enormous fun - and has given me lots of things to chase up - the Spanish story especially, but also the Russian one - and the 1830s "Paris before Man". I'm very grateful to have been directed here to find such wonders! :)

One time travel story that seems to have been missed, even in that terrific story-pilot link, is the 1888 story by Catherine Helen Spence, A Week in the Future (http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0603381h.html). The protagonist, with a weak heart and only year or two to live, expresses to her doctor her desire to see the future. Ah-ha!
"How far in the future should you like to spend your solid week--twenty years, fifty years, a hundred years hence?" said Dr. Brown, with a curious expression on his intelligent countenance.

Which leads fairly quickly to "our great experiment" - the time travel, powered by "strength of volition" and the contents of "a small phial containing a colorless liquid", and possibly some hypnotic passes by the doctor. There's "a singular calm", then "a mighty spasm", and there she is in the future.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Wow, glad you linked to this in heliopausa's recent post. What a fascinating discussion! Not only are the examples people turn up interesting, but your thoughts on what fits with in the rubric you're setting up. I agree that stories like The Time Machine are more about imagining the future, or critiquing the present from the future (Bellamy's Looking Backward (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Looking_Backward) is an example too, from 1888.) And then--I haven't read all the threads and subthreads, so maybe you've talked about this in one but--there's whether a person actually goes to the past, or merely has a dream or vision. Those sorts of stories seem, to my mind, to sit between time travel and historical fiction (i.e., a story that takes place in the past).

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Thanks for pointing me to that - what an interesting story! I'm always impressed at the knowledgeability and eloquence of the people one meets in the future: they seem to have an encyclopaedic grasp of history, economics, manufacturing, etc. I'm sure I'd be useless if some Tudor time traveller turned up and asked me to explain the internal combustion engine.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you enjoyed the discussion!

I tend to agree about the dream/vision thing, which is why I'm little chary of describing Puck of Pook's Hill as a time-travel story. It seems ambiguous at most.

[heliopausa.livejournal.com]

You're welcome! And for sure, about the knowledgeability and eloquence (not to say volubility) of the people encountered by this sort of traveller! :D What a great story it'd make, as a send-up, of an earnest time-traveller encountering good-hearted but unlearned citizens of the future world! (Which reminds me - Jerome K. Jerome did a send-up of exactly this sort of story - the socialist-inspired what-the-world-could-be-like story. JKJ was pretty staunchly Conservative, I guess. Anyway, I'll look for it.)

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

It always amused me that G. K. Chesterton's The Napoleon of Notting Hill is set in the fateful year, 1984. But he notes, writing in 1904: "When the curtain goes up on this story, eighty years after the present date, London is almost exactly like what it is now."

Which is rather refreshing.