# What was the first time-travelling story?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-first-time-travelling-story/819297>\
**Category:** Cafe Society\
**Created:** [August 8, 2018, 8:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-first-time-travelling-story/819297 "2018-08-08T20:11:01Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\
**Post date:** [August 12, 2018, 3:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-first-time-travelling-story/819297/21 "2018-08-12T03:08:48Z")

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While there are about a thousand different versions of the Arthurian legends, and so it’s hard to be sure, I think that the bit about Merlin aging backwards is a fairly recent addition, possibly even originating with T. H. White.

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**Author:** ![What\_Exit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/what_exit/32/10652_2.png) [@What\_Exit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_Exit)\
**Post date:** [August 21, 2018, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-first-time-travelling-story/819297/22 "2018-08-21T20:24:30Z")

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> [@What\_Exit](#):
>
> I have to do some digging, I swear there is an ancient story of a man traveling back in time and viewing earlier legendary events. The methods was magical though and not at all science oriented. By ancient I am saying before 1000 AD.

I never did find that older story of time travel I thought I remembered. Maybe it was a just a recent short story told from the perspective of someone from ancient days.

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**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\
**Post date:** [August 27, 2018, 12:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-first-time-travelling-story/819297/23 "2018-08-27T12:49:31Z")

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It’s not the first time-travel story—in fact it mentions Wells’ _Time Machine_—but the 1916 [“Enoch Soames” by Max Beerbohm](http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/760/pg760-images.html) is a fun read.

In the story, Soames travels from June 3, 1897 to, briefly, the British Museum one hundred years in the future. I became aware of it reading [an article from the 1997 Atlantic Monthly](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1997/11/a-memory-of-the-nineteen-nineties/376995/) describing several in the British Museum’s Reading Room June 3, 1997 waiting for Soames to arrive at the appointed hour. They were not disappointed.

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**Author:** ![Cartooniverse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cartooniverse/32/3084_2.png) [@Cartooniverse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cartooniverse)\
**Post date:** [August 28, 2018, 2:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-first-time-travelling-story/819297/24 "2018-08-28T14:00:57Z")

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> [@Chronos](#):
>
> Dickens’ _A Christmas Carol_ (1843) is usually credited as being the first time travel story, and Edward Page Mitchell’s “The Clock that Went Backwards” (1881) was the first story about a time machine.
> 
> But of course, the true earliest time travel story was “A Revised Account of the Events and Chronology of the Early Inflationary Era, as Based on Direct Observation and Experiementation”, published in the January 2463 edition of Physical Review G.

Member Name + post content for the win.

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