Sci-Fi time travel question

[Orrex]

This might be immediately obvious to someone else, but it has me puzzled. What was the first "time travel story" that featured someone going back to change some event with the intention of altering the present?

Wikipedia suggests that Tourmalin's Time Cheques "was the first story to play with the paradoxes that time travel could cause," but I know nothing of this story, so it might or might not be the answer to my question.

[wyldwolf]

1. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens?

[Orrex]

2. Wow. Never would have t hought of that one!

Great suggestion, though!

I was looking for the more "standard" format in which a person travels to her past to change something about her present, but it didn't occur to me to consider a character changing something in his present to alter the future that he's glimpsed.

Well done!

[Kind of Blue]

3. Wiki also lists these

in their "Origins of the concept" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_travel, that includes A Christmas Carol but not Tourmalin's Time Cheques, 1891, falling between A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court and The Time Machine. But these stories are not necessarily about changing the present. Great question, introduced me to books I've never heard of. Thanks.

* 1733 - Samuel Madden’s Memoirs of the Twentieth Century
* 1771 - Louis-Sébastien Mercier’s L'An 2440, rêve s'il en fût jamais
* 1838 - Missing One's Coach: An Anachronism
* 1843 - Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol
* 1861 - Pierre Boitard’s Paris avant les hommes
* 1881 - Edward Page Mitchell’s The Clock that Went Backward
* 1889 - Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court
* 1895 - H. G. Wells’ The Time Machine

[Orrex]

4. Yeah, that's where I found Tourmalin--the first I'd heard of him

I read the summaries of those stories you listed, but none except Tourmalin's quite seemed to fit.

Thanks for the info, though!

[Rowdyboy]

5. Neither "The Time Machine" or "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's court" fit your question

"The Time Machine" dealt only with going forward in time, even though the hero had the intention of changing future history. In "Connecticut Yankee" the hero goes back in time accidentally with no intentions except to survive.

Don't know about the others. Its an interesting question though....