Nov 14, 2009

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court | Just War, Pure and Simple

In the following essay, Dalrymple explores how Twain’s immersion in the events of the U.S. Civil War at the time of his writing A Connecticut Yankee influenced characterization and events in the novel.

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We are able to document the genesis of Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court quite precisely. During Twain’s “Twins of Genius” reading tour with George W. Cable in December 1884, the two entered a Rochester, New York, bookstore where Cable introduced his friend to Malory’s Morte D’Arthur. Alan Gribben has convincingly shown that this episode was not Twain’s first encounter with Malory—his daughters owned an 1880 children’s version of Malory, which their father must have known about, and in a letter dated August 1883...