Editing Alternate history (section)

===19th century===
One of the earliest works of alternate history published in large quantities for the reception of a large audience may be [[Louis Geoffroy]]'s ''Histoire de la Monarchie universelle : Napoléon et la conquête du monde (1812–1832)'' (History of the Universal Monarchy: Napoleon and the Conquest of the World) (1836), which imagines [[Napoleon]]'s [[First French Empire]] emerging victorious in the [[French invasion of Russia]] in 1812 and in an invasion of England in 1814, later unifying the world under Bonaparte's rule.<ref name="roads" />
[[File:The Glorious Appearing of Jesus to the Nephites by William Armitage.PNG|thumb|220x220px|''The Glorious Appearing of [[Jesus]] to the [[Nephites]]'' by William Armitage]]
''[[The Book of Mormon]]'' (published 1830) is described as an "alternative history" by [[Richard Lyman Bushman]], a biographer of [[Joseph Smith]]. Smith claimed to have translated the document from golden plates, which told the story of a Jewish group who migrated from Israel to the Americas and inhabited the region from about 600 B.C. to 400 A.D., becoming the ancestors of [[Indigenous peoples of the Americas|Native Americans]]. In the 2005 biography ''[[Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling]]'', Bushman wrote that the ''Book of Mormon'' "turned American history upside down [and] works on the premise that a history—a book—can reconstitute a nation. It assumes that by giving a nation an alternative history, alternative values can be made to grow."<ref>Richard Lyman Bushman. Knopf, ISBN 1-4000-4270-4, p. 104</ref>

In the English language, the first known complete alternate history may be [[Nathaniel Hawthorne]]'s [[short story]] "[[P.'s Correspondence]]", published in 1845. It recounts the tale of a man who is considered "a madman" due to his perceptions of a different 1845, a reality in which long-dead famous people, such as the poets [[Robert Burns]], [[Lord Byron]], [[Percy Bysshe Shelley]], and [[John Keats]], the actor [[Edmund Kean]], the British politician [[George Canning]], and [[Napoleon|Napoleon Bonaparte]], are still alive.

The first novel-length alternate history in English would seem to be [[Castello Holford]]'s ''[[Aristopia]]'' (1895). While not as nationalistic as Geoffroy's ''Napoléon et la conquête du monde, 1812–1823'', ''Aristopia'' is another attempt to portray a Utopian society. In ''Aristopia'', the earliest settlers in [[Virginia]] discover a reef made of solid [[gold]] and are able to build a [[Utopia]]n society in [[North America]].