The ungentle laws and customs touched upon in this tale are historical, and the epis6des which are used to illustrate them are also historical. It is not pretended that these laws and customs existed in England in the sixth century; no, it is only pretended that inasmuch as they existed in the English and other civilizations of far later times, it is safe to consider that it is no libel upon the sixth century to suppose them to have been in practice in that day also. One is quite justified in inferring that wherever one of these laws or customs was lacking in that remote time, its place was competently filled by a worse one.
This novel tells the story of Hank Morgan, the quintessential self-reliant New Englander, who brings to KingArthur"s Age of Chivalry the "great and beneficent" miracles of nineteenth-century engineering and American ingenuity, Through the collision of past and present, Twain exposes the insubstantiality of both utopias, destroying the myth of the romantic ideal as welt as his own era"s faith in scientific and social "progress."
Preface
A Word of Explanation
Camelot
King Arthur"s Court
Knights of the Table Round
Sir Dinadan the Humorist
An Inspiration
The Eclipse
Merlin"s Tower
The Boss
The Tournament
Beginnings of Civilization
The Yankee in Search of Adventure
Slow Torture
Freemen!
"Defend Thee, Lord!"
Sandy"s Tale
Morgan Le Fay
A Royal Banquet
In the Queen"s Dungeom
Knight-Errancy as a Trade
The Ogre"s Castle
The Pilgrims
The Holy Fountain
Restoration of the Fountain
A Rival Magician
A Competitive Examination
The First Newspaper
The Yankee and the King Travel Incognito
Drilling the King
The Smallpox Hut
The Tragedy of the Manor House
Marco
Dowley"s Humiliation
Sixth-Century Political Economy
The Yankee and the King Sold as Slaves
A Pitiful Incident
An Encounter in the Dark
An Awful Predicament
Sir Lancelot and Knights to the Rescue
The Yankee"s Fight with the Knights
Three Years Later
The Interdict
War!
The Battle of the Sand Belt
A Postscript by Clarence