A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

Mark Twain · 1835–1910 · USA

Why it matters

A nineteenth-century factory foreman wakes in Camelot and tries to modernize it with gunpowder, newspapers, and Yankee know-how, until progress curdles into massacre. Twain's satire of technology and feudalism turns savage by its last page.

At a glance

Episodic burlesque comedy darkens late into dense, bitter satire.