A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

One of the greatest satires in American literature, Mark Twain’s A Connecticut
Yankee in King Arthur’s Court begins when Hank Morgan, a skilled mechanic in a
nineteenth-century New England arms factory, is struck on the head during a
quarrel and awakens to find himself among the knights and magicians of King
Arthur’s Camelot. The ‘Yankee’ vows brashly to "boss the whole country inside
of three weeks" and embarks on an ambitious plan to modernize Camelot with
19th c. industrial inventions like electricity and gunfire. It isn’t long
before all hell breaks loose! Written in 1889, Mark Twain's novel is one of
literature’s first genre mash-ups and one of the first works to feature time
travel. It is one of the best known Twain stories, and also one of his most
unique. Twain uses the story concept to launch a social commentary on
contemporary society, a thinly veiled critique of the contemporary times
despite the Old World setting. While the dark pessimism that would fully
blossom in Twain’s later works can be discerned in A Connecticut Yankee in
King Arthur’s Court, the novel will nevertheless be remembered primarily for
its wild leaps of imagination, brilliant wit, and entertaining storytelling.