A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (Great Illustrated Classics) - Hardcover

Samuel L. Clemens

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0396086861 ISBN 13: 9780396086864

Publisher: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1985

Synopsis

Hank Morgan, nineteenth-century New Englander, is knocked on the head with a crowbar and wakes up to find himself in sixth century England, during the reign of King Arthur. Ever resourceful, he determines to be the boss of the entire country within three weeks, and with his use of the 'great and beneficent' miracles of nineteenth-century engineering, he triumphs. Hank's efforts to modernize Camelot by organizing a school system, constructing telephone lines, and inventing the printing press bring some unexpected results. A witty, often hilarious social satire that exposes utopian and romantic ideals and provides a disturbing analysis of the benefits of progress and dissolution of social mores, this is Twain's most ambitious work, a literary tour de force.

About this title

From the Publisher:

10 1.5-hour cassettes

From the Inside Flap:

This novel tells the story of Hank Morgan, the quintessential self-reliant New Englander who brings to King Arthur's Age of Chivalry the "great and beneficent" miracles of nineteenth-century engineering and American ingenuity. Through the collision of past and present, Twain exposes the insubstantiality of both utopias, destroying the myth of the romantic ideal as well as his own era's faith in scientific and social progress.
A central document in American intellectual history, "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court is at once a hilarious comedy of anachronisms and incongruities, a romantic fantasy, a utopian vision, and a savage, anarchic social satire that only one of America's greatest writers could pen.

About this edition

• Publisher: Dodd, Mead & Company
• Publication date: 1985
• ISBN 10: 0396086861
• ISBN 13: 9780396086864
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 450
• Illustrator: Dan Beard