The Big List of Time Travel Adventures

 Related to: Elizabethan England
 from antiquity to 2017



   The Panchronicon
by Harold Steele MacKaye
First publication: April 1904

In 1898, Copernicus Droop has a flying time machine drop into his lap from the year 2582, whereupon he hatches a plan to take Rebecca Wise and her sister, Phœbe, back to 1876 where he can invent all kinds of modern things and Rebecca might convince her younger self to marry that fine young Joe Chandler—but instead they go rather further back to Elizabethan times where capricious capers (but no time paradoxes) ensue.

 It does sound outlandish, when you think how big the world is. But what if ye go to the North Pole? Ain’t all the twenty-four meridians jammed up close together around that part of the globe? Ain’t it clear that if a feller’ll jest take a grip on the North Pole and go whirlin’ around it, he’ll be cutting meridians as fast as a hay-chopper? Won’t he see the sun getting left behind and whirlin’ the other way from what it does in nature? If the sun goes the other way round, ain’t it sure to unwind all the time that it’s been a-rollin’ up? 


This still photograph from the Broadway play is part of the New York Public

   The Road to Yesterday
by Beulah Marie Dix and Evelyn Greenleaf Sutherland
First performance: 31 Dec 1906 on Broadway at Herald Square Theatre

To me, the play had the feel of madcap antics in Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest—but with time travel! In the play, a midsummer’s wish takes two travelers, Elspeth and Jack, from 1903 to their earlier selves in 1603, returning rather friendlier than they left.

 Elspeth: Oh, dear Aunt Harriet! It isn’t sudden—really not! We’ve been engaged three hundred years! 




   The Road to Yesterday
adapted by Jeanie MacPherson and Beulah Marie Dix (Cecille B. DeMille, director)
First release: 15 Nov 1925

Although Dix was one of the writers of this silent movie, I didn't see much resemblance between the movie and Dix’s earlier play of the same name. In the movie, bickering newlyweds Kenneth and Malena Paulton are thrown back to previous lives in Elizabethan England where they are a knight and a gypsy.

 I know I love you, Ken! But today—during the marriage service—something seemed to reach out of the Past that made me—afraid! 




   A Traveller in Time
by Alison Uttley
First publication: 1939

While staying with her aunt in Derbyshire, sickly young Penelope Taberner Cameron is swept back to the sixteenth century where she is caught up in the Babington plot to overthrow Queen Elizabeth I.

 I flung open the door, and I fell headlong down a flight of stairs. I had dropped into the corridor where I had seen the servants pass with their jugs and tankards. For some time I lay half-stunned with surprise, but unhurt, for I had fallen silently like a feather floating to the floor. I looked round at the door, but it had disappeared; I stared at the low whitewashed ceiling and the carved doorways, and I listened to the beating of my heart which was the only sound. Then life seemed to come to the world, distant shouts of men, the jingle of harness, and the lowing of cattle. A cock crew as if to wake the dead, and I sat up trying to remember . . . remember. . . . 






   Startling Comics
aka Ace Buckley
created by Max Plaisted
First publication: Startling Comics 3, Oct 1940

For eight issues of Startling Stories, Ace Buckley and his sidekick Toni Stark (no, not that Tony Stark) plied centuries past in Ace’s rocket-shaped time machine.
  1. Startling Comics 3 (Oct 1940) Vikings/Incas
  2. Startling Comics 4 (Dec 1940) shores of Tripoli
  3. Startling Comics 5 (Feb 1941) Elizabethan times
  4. Startling Comics 6 (Apr 1941) the Crusades
  5. Startling Comics 7 (May 1941) Jamestown
  6. Startling Comics 8 (Jul 1941) Blackbeard
  7. Startling Comics 9 (Aug 1941) Battle of Marathon
  8. Startling Comics 10 (Sep 1941) Simon Bolivar

 The machine vibrated dizzily. In just a few seconds we found ourselves back in time, a thousand years ago, half buried in sand. 




   Time Flies
by Ted Kavanagh, J.O.C. Orton and Howard Irving Young (Walter Forde, director)
First release: 8 May 1944

Actress Susie Barton’s husband invested their nestegg in Time Ferry Services, Ltd., but the only way she’ll ever get anything out of it is by taking a trip to Elizabethan times.

 The Professor: Time? What is time? Having successfully controverted the classical views of Euclid and Newton, we arrive at the Theory of Relativity, which states that space-time in the neighborhood of a gravitational field is curved—pop!, pardon—whereas at an infinite distance from such a field field, it is not.
Tommy: How true, how true! Proceed, Prof.
The Professor: Now, the curvature of space-time at any point in the continuum is proportional to the intensity of the gravitational field at that point, and consequently, as I have shown, there is no reason whatever why time should be of infinite duration.
Bill: Very interesting, isn’t it?
Susie: Yeah, what’s he talking about?
Bill: He didn’t say. 




   A Traveller in Time
adapted by Doame Devere Cole
First episode: 4 Jan 1978

The BBC adapted Alison Uttley’s children’s book in a miniseries of five half-hour episodes, faithfully taking young Penelope Taberner Cameron back to Elizabethan England and the time of Mary, Queen of Scots. If you can find the British DVD, you'll even hear Simon Gipps-Kent regale Penelope with Greensleeves”.

 ♫Alas, my love, you do me wrong
To cast me off, discourteously♫ 


a portion of a cipher code, which has a role in the story

   A Traveller in Time
adapted by Michael Johnston
First publication: 2011

Novelist and playwright Michael Johnston adapted Alison Uttley’s 1939 children’s book to the stage in this short three-act play with multiple transitions between the twentieth and the sixteenth century.

 The lights dim and the kitchen is “transformed” into how it was in the Spring of 1582 but many of the kitchen props, including the table and rocking chair remain. As the lights come up again, loud cock crows are heard suggesting that time has passed and it is the following morning. An offstage voice is heard calling out for Dame Cecily. Tabitha enters stage leading a puzzled Penelope by the hand. Penelope is wearing a green dress with wide sleeves. 


 

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Thanks for visiting my time-travel page, and thanks to the many sources that provided stories and more (see the Links and Credits in the menu at the top). —Michael (main@colorado.edu)