The Gilded Age (Cyclopedia of Literary Places)
At a glance:
- Author: Mark Twain, Charles Dudley Warner
- First Published: 1873
- Type of Work: Novel
- Type of Plot: Satire
- Time of Work: Late 1840’s to early 1870’s
- Genres: Long fiction, Satire
- Subjects: United States or Americans, Nineteenth century, Politicians, Moral conditions, Corruption, Entrepreneurship or entrepreneurs, Real estate, Land settlement, Coal or coal mining
- Locales: Washington, D.C., Tennessee, Missouri
Places Discussed
Obedstown. Tiny village in eastern Tennessee whose few homes are so widely dispersed among trees that it is difficult for visitors to realize that they are in a “town.” The novel opens with the village postmaster, Si Hawkins, receiving a letter from his friend Colonel Sellers urging him to bring his family to Missouri because that state offers easier riches. Hawkins’s giving up on Obedstown is the first of the novel’s many relocations in search of easier wealth.
Twain modeled Obedstown on Jamestown, Tennessee, where his own parents lived before...
[The entire page is 1276 words long]
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