Roger Willoughby or the Times of Benbow: A Tale of the Sea and Sand (1881)

Alice’s Robot tells the story of a young girl and her love for her robot.Robot Giskard, renamed Max by Alice, is an antique robot discovered and reprogrammed by her grandfather, Henry Brown as his special tenth birthday gift. Henry thinks he has programmed Max to wait on Alice and be her companion but as the days go by it is obvious to them both that Max is much more advanced than Henry thought. From the beginning, Max acts according to memories from his former life. He tells Alice and Henry about of the planet of his former mistress and entices them to return with him to Evergreen Gardens on the planet Terra. There, Alice learns more about the characteristics of robots, but most importantly she learns that Earth has made dangerous decisions in a universe populated by pirates and armies of robots capable of devastating her home planet.