Oldest Alternate Histories
This section lists alternate histories written before the genre could be considered a genre. Arguments can be made for a number of possible dates marking a possible genre beginning point (see, e.g., Winthrop-Young's "Fallacies and Thresholds"), from the 1931 publication of J.C. Squire's anthology If It Had Happened Otherwise to the 1953 publication of Ward Moore's Bring the Jubilee. The date chosen here is 1939, the year that L. Sprague de Camp's original short story of "Lest Darkness Fall" saw publication, an event which effectively made alternate history fiction a sub-genre of science fiction.
The increasing number of alternate histories which saw publication from the mid-1930s on are presumably a result of the generally respectful treatment given the subject by the essayists in Squire's If It Had Happened Otherwise and by historian Albert Toynbee in three essays included in his A Study of History.
The first allohistorical novel would seem to be Geoffroy-Château's Napoléon et la conquête du monde, 1812-1823: histoire de la monarchie universelle (1836). Benjamin Disraeli's The Wondrous Tale of Alroy (1833) predates that work, but there is serious question whether Alroy is truly allohistorical.
The earliest allohistorical short story is apparently Nathaniel Hawthorne's "P.'s Correspondence" (1845).
Other pre-1850 items listed below are not entirely alternate history but contain allohistorical digressions within larger works.
c-35 — Livy (Titus Livius). Ab urbe condita
1732 — Lesage, Alain-René. Les Aventures de Monsieur Robert Chevalier, dit de Beauchêne, capitaine de flibustiers dans la Nouvelle-France
1791 — Delisle de Sales, Jean-Baptiste-Claude. Ma République [vt Eponine, ou De la république]
1813 — Pignotti, Lorenzo. Storia della Toscana sino al principato: con diversi saggi sulle scienze, lettere e arti
1833 — Disraeli, Benjamin. The Wondrous Tale of Alroy [vt Alroy: or, The Prince of the Captivity, a Wondrous Tale]
1836 — Geoffroy-Château, Louis-Napoléon. Napoléon et la conquête du monde, 1812-1823: histoire de la monarchie universelle [vt Napoléon apocryphe]
1845 — Hawthorne, Nathaniel. "P.'s Correspondence"
1849 — Disraeli, Isaac. "Of a History of Events Which Have Not Happened"
1854 — Méry, Joseph. "Histoire de ce qui n'est pas arrivé"
1872 — Blanqui, Louis-Auguste. L'Éternité par les astres: hypothèse astronomique
1876 — Renouvier, Charles. Uchronie (l'utopie dans l'histoire), esquisse historique apocryphe du développement de la civilisation européenne tel qu'il n'a pas été, tel qu'il aurait pu être
1881 — Hale, Edward Everett. "Hands Off"
1885 — Fabra, Nilo Maria. "Cuatro siglos de buen gobierno"
1895 — Holford, Castello N. Aristopia. A Romance-History of the New World
1899 — Lawrence, Edmund. It May Happen Yet: A Tale of Bonaparte's Invasion of England
1900 — Williams, F.P. Hallie Marshall: A True Daughter of the South
1900 — Herzl, Theodor. "Der Unterhimer Bounaparte"
1902 — Pidgin, Charles Felton. The Climax; or, What Might Have Been: A Romance of the Great Republic
1904 — Beerbohm, Max. "A Panacea"
1905 — Wells, H.G. A Modern Utopia
1906 — Munk, Odd. Det nye Norge: Krigen 1905
1907 — Grunfeld, P.P. Alroy; A Music-drama, in Four Acts
1907 — Trevelyan, G.M. "If Napoleon had Won the Battle of Waterloo"
1907 — Chamberlin, Joseph Edgar. The Ifs of History
1918 — McManus, Lily. The Professor in Erin
1920 — Beck, James M. "It Might Have Been"
1921 — Homsy, Gaston. Si les Allemands avaient gagne la guerre…
1921 — Rigaut, Jacques. "Un brillant sujet"
1922 — Baring, Maurice. "The Alternative"
1924 — Pervuhin, Mikhail. Pugachev — Pobeditel'
1924 — Słonimski, Antoni. Torpeda czasu: powieść fantastyczna
1926 — Dent, Guy. Emperor of the If
1926 — Petrie, Charles. "If: A Jacobite Fantasy"
1926 — Waldron, Webb. "If Lincoln had Yielded"
1927 — Motta, Luigi. Il tunnel sottomarino
1929 — Laumann, E.M., and René Jeanne. Si, le 9 thermidor…: hypothèse historique
1929 — Hearnshaw, F.J.C. The "Ifs" of History
1929 — Doyle, Arthur Conan. "The Death Voyage"
1930 — Newman, Bernard. The Cavalry Went Through!
1930 — Mencken, H.L. "The Calamity of Appomattox"
1930 — Thurber, James. "If Grant Had Been Drinking at Appomattox"
1930 — Waldman, Milton. "If Booth had Missed Lincoln"
1931 — Squire, J.C. "If It Had Been Discovered in 1930 that Bacon Really Did Write Shakespeare" [vt "Professor Gubbin's Revolution"]
1931 — Van Loon, Hendrik Willem. "If the Dutch had Kept Nieuw Amsterdam"
1931 — Ludwig, Emil. "If the Emperor Frederick had not had Cancer"
1931 — Chesterton, G.K. "If Don John of Austria had Married Mary Queen of Scots"
1931 — Squire, J.C. (ed.). If It Had Happened Otherwise: Lapses Into Imaginary History [vt If: or, History Rewritten]
1931 — Knox, Ronald. "If the General Strike had Succeeded"
1931 — Nicolson, Harold. "If Byron had Become King of Greece"
1931 — Fisher, H.A.L. "If Napoleon had Escaped to America"
1931 — Churchill, Winston S. "If Lee had not Won the Battle of Gettysburg"
1931 — Maurois, André. "If Louis XVI had an Atom of Firmness"
1931 — Belloc, Hilaire. "If Drouet's Cart had Stuck"
1931 — Guedalla, Philip. "If the Moors in Spain had Won"
1932 — Goodman, Arthur. If Booth had Missed: A Drama of the Reconstruction Period
1933 — Squire, J.C. "What Might Have Happened"
1933 — Schachner, Nat. "Ancestral Voices"
1933 — Newman, Bernard. Hosanna!
1934 — Leinster, Murray. "Sidewise in Time"
1934 — Toynbee, Arnold J. "The Forfeited Birthright of the Abortive Scandinavian Civilization"
1934 — Toynbee, Arnold J. "The Forfeited Birthright of the Abortive Far Eastern Christian Civilization"
1934 — Toynbee, Arnold J. "The Forfeited Birthright of the Abortive Far Western Christian Civilization"
1935 — Benét, Stephen Vincent. "The Curfew Tolls"
1935 — Rolfe, Frederick William, and C.H. Pirie-Gordon. Hubert's Arthur: Being Certain Curious Documents Found Among the Literary Remains of Mr. N.C.
1935 — Lewis, Lloyd. "If Lincoln Had Lived"
1936 — Dabney, Virginius. "If the South had Won the War"
1937 — Aron, Robert. Victoire à Waterloo
1937 — Nock, Albert Jay. "If Only—"
1938 — Sell, William. "Other Tracks"
1938 — Bopp, Léon. Liaisons du monde: roman d'un politique
1938 — Villard, Oswald Garrison. "Issue and Men"
1939 — De Camp, L. Sprague. Lest Darkness Fall
