The Left-Handed Sword
- by E. Nesbit
- Short Story
- Fantasy
- Children
- Definite Time Travel
- English
- “The Left-Handed Sword” by E. Nesbit, in These Little Ones (George Allen and Sons, 1909).
After many previous attempts at prying a stone out of the overgrown castle arch, young Sir Hugh de Vere Coningsby Drelincourt finally succeeds and discovers a portal to the past where he becomes young 17th century Sir Hugh.
—Michael Main
Through into a little room whose narrow window showed the blue day-lit sky—a room with not much in it but a bed, a carved stool, and a boy of his own age, dressed in the kind of dress you see in the pictures of the little sons of Charles the First.
Tags
(8)
- Time Periods
- Circa AD 1600 to 1699: time of Charles I, which Hugh visits
- Circa AD 1900 to 1929: presumed home time of the story
- Timeline Models
- Time Travel Methods
- Themes
- Mind Travel: We thought 20th-century Hugh was a descendant of 17th-century Hugh, but you’ll see from the story that 20th-century Hugh can’t be a descendant, so we call this mind travel rather than ancestor travelx.
- People from Different Times Look Exactly Alike: both Hugh and his mother look like their 17th-century counterparts
- Real-World Tags
- English Civil War: King Charles I against the Roundheads
- Stuart Period
Variants
(1)
- “The Left-Handed Sword” by E. Nesbit, in These Little Ones (George Allen and Sons, 1909).
Indexer Notes
(1)
- Classification—Hugh doesn’t count it as a dream, so neither do we: “But the odd thing is that nothing will persuade Hugh that this was only a dream.“ Also, they found the treasure!