The Gilded Age (Masterplots, Revised Second Edition)
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
- Setting: United States
- Principal Characters: Washington Hawkins, Laura Hawkins, Colonel Beriah Sellers, Philip Sterling, Harry Brierly, Senator Dilworthy, Ruth Bolton
- 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
The Story:
Squire Hawkins of Obedstown, Tennessee, received a letter from Colonel Beriah Sellers asking Hawkins to come to Missouri with his wife Nancy and their two children, Emily and George Washington. Moved by the Colonel’s eloquent account of opportunities to be found in the new territory, the family traveled west. On the journey, they stopped at a house where a young child was mourning the death of his mother. Feeling compassion for the orphan, Hawkins offered to adopt him. His name was Henry Clay.
The travelers boarded the Boreas, a steamboat headed up...
[The entire page is 2572 words long]
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