The Panchronicon
The Panchronicon is a science fiction novel written by Harold Steele Mackaye and first published in 1904. It is one of the first books to discuss time travel and a good example of early science fiction.
The story is set in the year 1897, where the Shakespeare sisters and Rebecca Phoebe meet the town drunk, named Copernicus Droop, and discover that they have a time-traveling machine called the Panchronicon.
The group embarks on a fun adventure to travel to Elizabethan England and discover if Francis Bacon is the real author of William Shakespeare's plays. And the trip will not stop there, but a character will try to make a fortune by taking inventions of the future to the past, pretending to be the inventor...
All this in a pleasant and entertaining reading, full of paradoxes and questions about time travel.
"The two sisters were together in their garden. Rebecca Wise, turned forty and growing slightly gray at the temples, was moving slowly from one of her precious plants to the next, leaning over each to pinch off a dead leaf or count the buds."
Your download has started
PDF · The Panchronicon — didn't start? Download again
Also available: PDF · EPUB · MOBI · Read online
Read it on a Kindle
Download the EPUB and send it with Amazon's Send to Kindle (web, app, or your kindle.com email). Modern Kindles accept EPUB directly — no conversion needed.
On iPhone or iPad
Tap the downloaded file, then "Open in Books". It opens in Apple Books, with your reading progress synced across your devices.
On Android
Open the file with Google Play Books or any EPUB reader (ReadEra, Moon+ Reader). PDFs open in any viewer.
On your computer
PDFs open anywhere. For EPUB, try Calibre or Thorium Reader — both free and excellent.
Public domain (US)·No sign-up·DRM-free·Real text, not scans
Copyright note. The Panchronicon by Harold Steele Mackaye is believed to be in the public domain in the United States only. It may still be copyrighted in other countries. If you are not in the United States, please check your local laws to ensure this eBook is in the public domain in your country before downloading The Panchronicon in PDF or EPUB.
- Pages
- 235
- Reading time
- 6 hours 25 minutes
- Pace
- Intermediate
- First published
- 1904
- Language
- English
- Downloads
- 6,405
122 years later, still timely
Why Read The Panchronicon in 2026?
A time-travel caper where social comedy meets historical meddling. It’s a playful argument that tinkering with the past mostly exposes the present.
Today's connection
Nostalgia experiments are fashionable. This novel asks what we really want from “simpler times” and how ethics travel with us, clock to clock.
Time as toy
Paradoxes, but polite ones.
Society on stage
Manners under new light.
Interference ethics
Because you can ≠ you should.
Share this book
About the author
Harold Steele Mackaye
Theater craft, pageantry, and narrative experiments from a family of stage innovators.
