H. G. Wells wasn't the only nineteenth-century writer to dream of a time machine. The Spanish playwright Enrique Gaspar published El anacronopete--"He who flies against time"--eight years before Wells's influential work appeared. The novel begins at the 1878 Paris Exposition, where Dr. Don Sindulfo unveils his new invention--which looks like a giant sailing vessel. Soon the doctor embarks on a voyage back in time, accompanied by a motley crew of French prostitutes and Spanish soldiers. The purpose of his expedition is to track down the imprisoned wife of a third-century Chinese emperor,...

H. G. Wells wasn't the only nineteenth-century writer to dream of a time machine. The Spanish playwright Enrique Gaspar published El anacronopete--"He who flies against time"--eight years before Wells's influential work appeared. The novel begins at the 1878 Paris Exposition, where Dr. Don Sindulfo unveils his new invention--which looks like a giant sailing vessel. Soon the doctor embarks on a voyage back in time, accompanied by a motley crew of French prostitutes and Spanish soldiers. The purpose of his expedition is to track down the imprisoned wife of a third-century Chinese emperor,...

A satirical take on time travel, written before HG Wells, that starts in Paris in the late nineteenth century and takes the reader to China, Pompeii, and Mount Ararat at all the key moments in history. Witty and playful, it is at once a biting commentary on human arrogance as well as a lively panorama of 19th-century cultural life seen largely through the eyes of an eccentric Spaniard.