A Connecticut Yakenn in King Arthur’s Court亚瑟王朝廷上的康涅狄格人

The original American satirist
Crackedon the head by a crowbar in nineteenth-century Connecticut, Hank Morgan wakes to find himself in King Arthur's England. Branded by Twain's aptitude for broad comedy and biting social satire, the grim truths of Twain's Camelot-fear, injustice, ignorance-resound as clearly now as when it was written --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

From School Library Journal Grade 5 Up-While Mark Twain is most often identified with his childhood home on the Mississippi, he wrote many of his enduring classics during the years he lived in Hartford, Connecticut. He had come a long way from Hannibal when he focused his irreverent humor on medieval tales, and wrote A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. The hit on the head that sent protagonist Hank Morgan back through 13 centuries did not affect his natural resourcefulness. Using his knowledge of an upcoming eclipse, Hank escapes a death sentence, and secures an important position at court. Gradually, he introduces 19th century technology so the clever Morgan soon has an easy life. That does not stop him from making disparaging, tongue-in-cheek remarks about the inequalities and imperfections of life in Camelot. Twain weaves many of the well-known Arthurian characters into his story, and he includes a pitched battle between Morgan's men and the nobility. Kenneth Jay's narration is a mix of good-natured bonhomie for Hank and more formal diction for the arcane Olde English speakers. Appropriate music is used throughout to indicate story breaks and add authenticity to scenes. This good quality recording is enhanced by useful liner notes and an attractive case. Younger listeners may need explanations of less familiar words, and some knowledge of the Knights of the Round Table will be helpful. Libraries completing an audiobook collection of Twain titles will enjoy this nice, but not necessary, abridgement. Barbara Wysocki, Cora J. Belden Library, Rocky Hill, CT Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Audio CD edition. From AudioFile [Editor's Note: The following is a combined review with THE PRINCE AND THE PAUPER.]--It's easy to imagine Samuel Clemens and Carl Reiner as best of friends, had not the one died 10 years before the other was born. Twain would have enjoyed Reiner's work in "Your Show of Shows," "The 2000 Year Old Man," and "The Dick Van Dyke Show," just as Reiner clearly appreciates Twain's humor. The appreciation comes across in Reiner's readings of these two historical farces. Despite the good humor and the best intentions, there's something unfortunately incongruous in the juxtaposition of Twain's stories with Reiner's voice. As warmly entertaining as it is to listen to Carl Reiner, his Bronx Jewish accent and intonation don't jibe well with Twain's Mississippi and New England style, or with the medieval English settings of these two novels. S.E.S. © AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine --This text refers to the Audio Cassette edition. American Literature "The Yankee is a jewel. Nobody will ever be able to read, much less teach, it without this book." --This text refers to the Paperback edition. Nineteenth-Century Fiction "Each additional volume reaffirms our faith and celebration in this splendid series." --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Mark Twain was born Samuel Langhorne Clemens on November 30, 1835, in Florida, Missouri; his family moved to the port town of Hannibal four years later. His father, an unsuccessful farmer, died when Twain was eleven. Soon afterward the boy began working as an apprentice printer, and by age sixteen he was writing newspaper sketches. He left Hannibal at eighteen to work as an itinerant printer in New York, Philadelphia, St. Louis, and Cincinnati. From 1857 to 1861 he worked on Mississippi steamboats, advancing from cub pilot to licensed pilot.

After river shipping was interrupted by the Civil War, Twain headed west with his brother Orion, who had been appointed secretary to the Nevada Territory. Settling in Carson City, he tried his luck at prospecting and wrote humorous pieces for a range of newspapers. Around this time he first began using the pseudonym Mark Twain, derived from a riverboat term. Relocating to San Francisco, he became a regular newspaper correspondent and a contributor to the literary magazine the Golden Era. He made a five-month journey to Hawaii in 1866 and the following year traveled to Europe to report on the first organized tourist cruise. The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County and Other Sketches (1867) consolidated his growing reputation as humorist and lecturer.

After his marriage to Livy Langdon, Twain settled first in Buffalo, New York, and then for two decades in Hartfort, Connecticut. His European sketches were expanded into The Innocents Abroad (1869), followed by Roughing It (1872), an account of his Western adventures; both were enormously successful. Twain's literary triumphs were offset by often ill-advised business dealings (he sank thousands of dollars, for instance, in a failed attempt to develop a new kind of typesetting machine, and thousands more into his own ultimately unsuccessful publishing house) and unrestrained spending that left him in frequent financial difficulty, a pattern that was to persist throughout his life.

Following The Gilded Age (1873), written in collaboration with Charles Dudley Warner, Twain began a literary exploration of his childhood memories of the Mississippi, resulting in a trio of masterpieces--The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), Life on the Mississippi (1883), and finally The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), on which he had been working for nearly a decade. Another vein, of historical romance, found expression in The Prince and the Pauper (1882), the satirical A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889), and Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc (1896), while he continued to draw on his travel experiences in A Tramp Abroad (1880) and Following the Equator (1897). His close associates in these years included William Dean Howells, Bret Harte, and George Washington Cable, as well as the dying Ulysses S. Grant, whom Twain encouraged to complete his memoirs, published by Twain's publishing company in 1885.

For most of the 1890s Twain lived in Europe, as his life took a darker turn with the death of his daughter Susy in 1896 and the worsening illness of his daughter Jean. The tone of Twain's writing also turned progressively more bitter. The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894), a detective story hinging on the consequences of slavery, was followed by powerful anti-imperialist and anticolonial statements such as 'To the Person Sitting in Darkness' (1901), 'The War Prayer' (1905), and 'King Leopold's Soliloquy' (1905), and by the pessimistic sketches collected in the privately published What Is Man? (1906). The unfinished novel The Mysterious Stranger was perhaps the most uncompromisingly dark of all Twain's later works. In his last years, his financial troubles finally resolved, Twain settled near Redding, Connecticut, and died in his mansion, Stormfield, on April 21, 1910. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Preface
The Text of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
Contents of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
Author's Preface
Backgrounds and Sources
King Arthur
Washington Irving·[The Total Eclipse]
W. E. H. Lecky·[The Ascetic Saints]
W. E. H. Lecky·[The King's Touch]
W. E. H. Lecky·[Financing the Mansion House]
Composition and Publication
　THE AUTHOR AND THE NOVEL
Samuel L. Clemens·The "Tournament" in A.D. 1870
Samuel L. Clemens·The Great Revolution in Pitcaim
Samuel L. Clemens·Legend of the "Spectacular Ruin"
Samuel L. Clemens·The New Dynasty
Samuel L. Clemens·To Mrs. ]ervis Langdon
Samuel L. Clemens·To Mrs. Cincinnatus A. Taft
George Washington Cable·[Buying a Copy of Morte d'Arthur]
Samuel L. Clemens·From Mark Twain's Notebooks & ]ournals
From the New YorkSun and the New YorkHerald·[The 1886 Reading at Governor's Island]
Samuel L. Clemens·Letters about A Connecticut Yankee
Samuel L. Clemens·From The Autobiography of Mark Twain
Samuel L. Clemens" [A Rejected Preface]
THE DAN BEARD ILLUSTRATIONS
Daniel Carter Beard·[Making the Illustration for A Connecticut Yankee
Daniel Carter Beard·[The Character of the Yankee]
Samuel L. Clemens·To Dan Beard
Samuel L. Clemens·To a Reader
Henry Nash Smith·[Beard's Illustrations] THE ENGLISH EDITION
Dennis Welland·[Clemens, Chatto, and the English Edition]
Criticism
EARLY VIEWS
Sylvester Baxter·[Nothing More Delicious]
William Dean Howells·[His Wonder-Story]
From the London Daily Telegraph·[King Arthur or lay Gould?]
William T. Stead·Mark Twain's New Book: A Satirical Attack on English Institutions
From the Boston Literary World·[This Melancholy Product of the American Mind]
Andrew Lang·[He Has Not the Knowledge]
Rudyard Kipling·[The Yankee Animal]
Charles Whibley·[A Bull in the China-Shop of Ideas]
Albert Bigelow Paine·[His Literary Worst and Best]
RECENT CRITICISM
John B. Hoben·[So Much Divine Comedy]
Howard G. Baetzhold·[The Composition of A
Connecticut Yankee]
]ames D. Williams·Revision and Intention in Mark
Twain's A Connecticut Yankee
]ames D. Williams·The Use of History in MarkTwain's
A Connecticut Yankee
Kenneth S. Lynn·The Volcano
]ames M. Cox·A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's
Court: The Machinery of Self-Preservation
Louis J. Budd·Uncle Sam
Henry Nash Smith·The Ideas in a Dream
David Ketterer·Epoch-Eclipse and Apocalypse: Special
"Effects" in A Connecticut Yankee
Everett Carter·The Meaning of A Connecticut Yankee
Selected Bibliography