Temporal Playgrounds

The beginning of the 20 century saw the first story for children that included time travel. Eleven years after H.G. Wells‘ iconic novel The Time Machine (1895), Edith Nesbit published The Story of the Amulet in 1906. This pioneer contribution to children’s literature revealed what could be done and introduced time travel as a major theme in children’s books. Scholarship has focused on exemplary studies on time travel in children’s literature, but a comprehensive survey has not yet been conducted. This study responds to this shortcoming and investigates British time travel narratives for children from its early stages in 1906 until the beginning of the st 21 century. Thus, spanning over one hundred years, it traces shifts in the explanations of travels through time and demonstrates the extent to which writers have used this device.