First fictional British astronaut?

[major_clanger]

A follow-up to yesterday's post: what was the first fictional depiction of a British astronaut? The earliest one I can think of is HG Wells' The First Men in the Moon (1901) featuring Bedford and Cavor.

Cavor and Bedford were of course on a private expedition. Was there any depiction of an official British human spaceflight programme before 1953's

Comments

[cmcmck]

Francis Godwin's (1562-1633) 'The Man in the Moone' is the earliest fictional portrayal I can think of (spot the 17th century historian :o)

[davidwake]

Official or private?

[cmcmck]

Official! :o)

[pauldormer]

I looked that up on Wikipedia. It's usually considered the first instance of English SF, but the hero was Spanish, apparently.

[a_cubed]

Chilton's Journey into Space is also 1953 and may beat Quatermass Experiment in broadcast dates... Damn, checking Wikipedia QE is June, while JiS is September.
Dan Dare? First appeared 1950. Not as early as "The Man in the Moone".

[cobrabay]

Not quite, the organisation behind the "Prometheus" was Interplanetary, and that was a private organisation.

[timill]

Colonel Dare is 1950...

"Dan Dare appeared on the cover of the first issue of the weekly comic strip magazine, Eagle, on 14 April 1950"

Tim

[ffutures]

Stories of Other Worlds by George Griffith ran in Pearson's Magazine in 1899-1900, novelised in 1900. It has an antigravity spaceship visiting most of the solar system

The stories and my RPG based on them are here
http://www.forgottenfutures.com/game/ff2/

The Struggle For Empire by Robert W. Cole (1900) has the Anglo-Saxon empire of Earth fighting an interstellar war with the evil Sirians in the 23rd century. Both sides have interstellar ships, antigravity, death rays, etc.. I don't currently have it on line but the next release of my game will be based on it if I can ever get the damn thing finished.

[ffutures]

And here's an illo...

[ffutures]

Forgot to say that Griffith's spaceship was privately owned, Cole's ships were government owned.

[ffutures]

Also forgot to say that the three characters aboard the Griffith ship are a Lord, his new (American) bride, and a faithful retainer from darkest Yorkshire. So an early woman in space too!