A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

A Hartford mechanic, knocked on the head, wakes in Camelot in the year 528, takes over the kingdom by predicting an eclipse, and sets about industrialising the sixth century. Mark Twain published the book in 1889; it is at once a comedy, a satire of chivalry and of his own century, and, in its last chapters, something much darker.

Hank Morgan calls himself the Boss, installs telephones, newspapers and a stock exchange in the sixth century, and is certain throughout that he is improving it. Twain lets him be funny for three hundred pages and then follows the logic to the end, where the machinery Hank has built is turned on the knights and the book stops being a comedy at all.

Twain’s preface and the forty-four chapters are given complete.