A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

by Mark Twain, Justin Kaplan (Introduction)

Overview

Hank Morgan awakens one morning to find he has been transported from nineteenth-century New England to sixth-century England and the reign of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. Morgan brings to King Arthur’s utopian court the ingenuity of the future, resulting in a culture clash that is at once satiric, anarchic, and darkly comic.

Critically deemed one of Twain’s finest and most caustic works, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court is both a delightfully entertaining story and a disturbing analysis of the efficacy of government, the benefits of progress, and the dissolution of social mores. It remains as powerful a work of fiction today as it was upon its first publication in 1889.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780140430646
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	02/28/1972
Series:	Penguin Classics Series
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	416
Sales rank:	238,413
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 7.78(h) x 0.77(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Mark Twain (1835-1910) was an American humorist, novelist, and lecturer. Born Samuel Langhorne Clemens, he was raised in Hannibal, Missouri, a setting which would serve as inspiration for some of his most famous works. After an apprenticeship at a local printer’s shop, he worked as a typesetter and contributor for a newspaper run by his brother Orion. Before embarking on a career as a professional writer, Twain spent time as a riverboat pilot on the Mississippi and as a miner in Nevada. In 1865, inspired by a story he heard at Angels Camp, California, he published “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,” earning him international acclaim for his abundant wit and mastery of American English. He spent the next decade publishing works of travel literature, satirical stories and essays, and his first novel, The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (1873). In 1876, he published The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, a novel about a mischievous young boy growing up on the banks of the Mississippi River. In 1884 he released a direct sequel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which follows one of Tom’s friends on an epic adventure through the heart of the American South. Addressing themes of race, class, history, and politics, Twain captures the joys and sorrows of boyhood while exposing and condemning American racism. Despite his immense success as a writer and popular lecturer, Twain struggled with debt and bankruptcy toward the end of his life, but managed to repay his creditors in full by the time of his passing at age 74. Curiously, Twain’s birth and death coincided with the appearance of Halley’s Comet, a fitting tribute to a visionary writer whose steady sense of morality survived some of the darkest periods of American history.

Date of Birth:

November 30, 1835

Date of Death:

April 21, 1910

Place of Birth:

Florida, Missouri

Place of Death:

Redding, Connecticut

Read an Excerpt

Chapter I Camelot
(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court"
by .
Copyright © 1972 Mark Twain.
Excerpted by permission of Penguin Publishing Group.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Preface and Acknowledgments vii

The Text of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court 1

Contexts 383

Sources 385

[The Natural History of Morals] W. E. H. Leeky 386

[The Saints of the Desert] 388

Composition and Publication 391

Related Documents 392

The "Tournament" in a.d. 1870 392

[The Herald's Report of Twain's Speech at Governor's Island] 394

The New Dynasty 397

Enchantments and Enchanters 403

Notebook and Journal Entries 405

A Connecticut Yankee in Letters 409

To Mary Mason Fairbanks, November 16, 1886 409

To Charles L. Webster, August 3, 1887 410

To Theodore Crane, October 5, 1888 410

From Edmund Clarence Stedman, July 7, 1889 411

To William Dean Howells, August 5, 1889 413

To William Dean Howells, August 24, 1889 413

To William Dean Howells, September 22, 1889 414

To William Dean Howells, November 22, 1889 415

To William Dean Howells, December 23, 1889 415

To Sylvester Baxter, November 20, 1889 415

Dan Beard's Illustrations 417

[Making the Illustrations for A Connecticut Yankee] Daniel Carter Beard 417

[The Character of the Yankee] Daniel Carter Beard 419

To Dan Beard, August 28, 1989 Mark Twain 419

To a Reader, December 20, 1889 Mark Twain 420

Reading the Illustrations in A Connecticut Yankee Beverly David Ray Sapirstein 420

Criticism 427

Early Criticism 429

[Nothing More Delicious] Sylvester Baxter 429

[His Wonder-Story] William Dean Howells 432

[King Arthur or Jay Gould?] The London Daily Telegraph 436

Mark Twain's New Book: A Satirical Attack on English Institutions William T. Stead 440

[This Melancholy Product of the American Mind] The Boston Literary World 443

Recent Criticism 445

"Well, My Book Is Written-Let It Go. …": The Making of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court Howard G. Baetzhold 445

The Use of History in Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee Howard G. Baetzhold 477

The Ideas in a Dream Henry Nash Smith 492

The Meaning of A Connecticut Yankee Everett Carter 501

The Quarrel with Romance Bruce Michelson 520

Hank Morgan's and Mark Twain's Queer Anxieties Tison Pugh 536

A Connecticut Yankee in the Court of Wu Chih Tien Hsuan Hsu 547

Compositional Chronology 561

Selected Bibliography 563

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"Dufris's enthusiastic narration is perfect; the deep drawl he produces might very well be the voice of Twain himself, and his pacing and comedic timing will delight listeners." —-Publishers Weekly Starred Audio Review

Reading Group Guide

1.  How does Hank Morgan change throughout the novel? Is this change for the better, or for worse? How does his speech reflect his change in attitude?

2.  The theme of the “mysterious stranger” (an outsider who enters a community or circle and enacts some kind of disruption) often appears in Twain’s works. How does Hank use his status as an “outsider” to his advantage? What does he bring from the outside that benefits sixth-century England? Into which world does Hank ultimately fit?

3.  What is Hank Morgan’s view of the Catholic church?

4.  Many critics consider A Connecticut Yankee to be Twain’s most flawed work because he simply wanted to do “too much.” Do you agree? If so, why?

5.  Consider the end of the novel. What statement does Twain make with this ending? Do you feel it is a fulfilling way to end the book?

Editorial Reviews

"Twain is the funniest literary American writer. . . . [I]t must have been a great pleasure to be him."
—George Saunders

From the Publisher

When Hank Morgan is transported from 19th-century Hartford, Conn., to sixth-century England, his misadventures begin as he navigates a host of dangers en route to becoming “The Boss” of Camelot. William Dufris’s enthusiastic narration is perfect; the deep drawl he produces might very well be the voice of Twain himself, and his pacing and comedic timing will delight listeners. Dufris is clearly enjoying himself, and he produces a series of unique voices for the knights and damsels Morgan meets in Camelot. (June)

Publishers Weekly

One of Mark Twain’s best comic novels and is still funny more than a century after it first appeared.”

Oxford Times

Twain is the funniest literary American writer…It must have been a great pleasure to be him.”

George Saunders

Here [Twain] is to the full the humorist, as we know him; but he is very much more, and his strong, indignant, often infuriate hate of injustice, and his love of equality, burn hot through the manifold adventures and experiences in the tale…The delicious satire, the marvelous wit, the wild, free, fantastic humor are the colors of the tapestry, while the texture is a humanity that lives in every fibre.”

Harper’s

Of all the extraordinary conceits that have germinated in his fruitful imagination, nothing more delicious has ever occurred to Mark Twain…Twain’s rich humor never coursed more freely than here, where just provocation is never absent.”

Boston Herald