Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court is among Twain's most popular books; a comedic novel that follows Hank Morgan, a practical and inventive 19th-century engineer, who is mysteriously transported back to medieval England during King Arthur's reign.

After using his knowledge of a solar eclipse to avoid execution, Hank becomes a powerful figure at court, nicknamed "The Boss." He attempts to modernize the kingdom with technology, education, and industry, believing he can replace superstition with reason and progress. However, his reforms clash with the entrenched power of the Church, the feudal system, and the romanticized ideals of knighthood.

Ultimately, the novel blends satire and adventure to critique both medieval romanticism and the flaws of modern civilization, questioning whether technological progress alone can truly improve society.

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court is reproduced here in its original and unabridged format.

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Mark Twain (1835-1910) was born Samuel Langhorne Clemens in Hannibal, Missouri, where some of his greatest stories are set. He would become one of the country's best-known authors, is often credited with being the father of American literature and is the author of what many critics call the Great American Novel: "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn." Twain's writing career began when he was working as a typesetter at his brother Orion's newspaper, contributing occasional articles. He would later work as an itinerant printer in various Eastern cities, educating himself in public libraries. He would find work as a riverboat pilot as well and his experiences would later be collected into this book "Life on the Mississippi" (1883). His first real success came when he penned the short story "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" in 1865. The story gained him international attention and launched his career as a humorist, essayist and, eventually, novelist. Marrying a wealthy socialite, Olivia Langdon, she and Twain originally lived in Buffalo, New York where Twain worked as a printer and editor, but as his writing grew more and more successful, they eventually built a home in Hartford, Connecticut where Twain wrote most of his best-known works. His list of books reads as a top-ten list of American novels: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), The Prince and the Pauper (1881), Life on the Mississippi (1883), Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889). Enormously successful during his lifetime, he lost a great deal of his money in making poor investments, but he not only made it all back (and paid back his creditors) but he managed to again become fabulously wealthy before dying in 1910. Lauded by critics and fellow writers alike, Twain is now considered on the finest novelists in American history and his influence can be felt even today. Ernest Hemingway would later say of Twain: "All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn."