A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

<p>In 1879 Colt Arms Factory superintendent Hank Morgan gets a crowbar to the head and wakes up in King Arthur’s England of AD 528 replete with steel-plated knights hefty horses blushing ladies vast castles and a great oaken table the shape and size of a circus ring. Under this charming veneer roils a cesspit of slavery superstition criminal injustices legally wrought by Church as well as State and hopeless despair.</p><p> </p><p>Whatever is an epitome of Yankee practicality and American sensibilities to do? Why conquer the kingdom of course and drag it kicking and screaming into the nineteenth century.</p><p> </p><p>“If you only know the various comic-book and film adaptations of Mark Twain’s <i><em>A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court</i></em> you’re liable to imagine the book as a laugh riot an exercise in anachronistic fun. Knights on bicycles! Knights in armor playing baseball! A newspaper named <i><em>The Camelot Weekly Hosannah and Literary Volcano</i></em>! In fact Twain’s 1889 novel is seldom what we’d call funny. Instead it’s more the literary equivalent of the Fourth of July—a farrago of politics preaching and fireworks.” ~ <i><em>The Washington Post</i></em></p><p> </p><p>Includes illustrations by Daniel Carter Beard created for the original 1889 edition.</p>