1889 Twain Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur's Court 1st Ed

Harper Brothers

Illustrated. First Edition, First Printing issue points including the S like ornament between the two word caption on page 59 and without broken type on page 72.

Mark Twain wrote A Connecticut Yankee after reading Thomas Malory's Morte dArthur, exploring a number of implicit parallels between Arthurs England and the American South, slavery, an agrarian economy which came into armed conflict with an industrial economy, a chivalric code which, Clemens said, was second hand Walter Scott and kept the South mawkish, adolescent, verbose, and addicted.

In the book, a Yankee engineer from Connecticut named Hank Morgan receives a severe blow to the head and is somehow transported in time and space to England during the reign of King Arthur.

After some initial confusion and his capture by one of Arthurs knights, Hank realizes that he is in the past, and he uses his knowledge to make people believe that he is a powerful magician.

He attempts to modernize the past in order to make people's lives better, but in the end he is unable to prevent the death of Arthur and an interdict against him by the Catholic Church of the time, which grows fearful of his power.