"A Yankee at the Court of King Arthur" by Mark Twain. London: Chatto & Windus, 1889. First edition. Art by Dan Beard
This British edition contains 220 Illustrations by Dan Beard.and preceded the American edition by a few days. It is Mark Twain’s time travel novel. In it, Yankee engineer Hank Morgan from Connecticut is accidentally transported back in time to medieval England and the court of King Arthur. Hank fools the inhabitants of that time into thinking he is a magician—and soon uses his Yankee ingenuity and knowledge of modern technology to become a "magician" in earnest, stunning the English with such feats as demolition and fireworks. He attempts to modernize the society, but in the end he is unable to prevent the death of Arthur and a censure against him by the Catholic Church, which grows fearful of his power.
Twain wrote the book as a satire of romantic notions of chivalry after being inspired by a dream in which he was a knight himself, and severely inconvenienced by the weight and cumbersome nature of his armor. [Source: Wikipedia]
Hollywood put its own spin on the story with a 1949 musical comedy starring Bing Crosby, Rhonda Fleming, William Bendix and Sir Cedric Hardwicke.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_yJBUaNnpY
"A Yankee at the Court of King Arthur" by Mark Twain. London: Chatto & Windus, 1889. First edition. Art by Dan Beard
This British edition contains 220 Illustrations by Dan Beard.and preceded the American edition by a few days. It is Mark Twain’s time travel novel. In it, Yankee engineer Hank Morgan from Connecticut is accidentally transported back in time to medieval England and the court of King Arthur. Hank fools the inhabitants of that time into thinking he is a magician—and soon uses his Yankee ingenuity and knowledge of modern technology to become a "magician" in earnest, stunning the English with such feats as demolition and fireworks. He attempts to modernize the society, but in the end he is unable to prevent the death of Arthur and a censure against him by the Catholic Church, which grows fearful of his power.
Twain wrote the book as a satire of romantic notions of chivalry after being inspired by a dream in which he was a knight himself, and severely inconvenienced by the weight and cumbersome nature of his armor. [Source: Wikipedia]
Hollywood put its own spin on the story with a 1949 musical comedy starring Bing Crosby, Rhonda Fleming, William Bendix and Sir Cedric Hardwicke.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_yJBUaNnpY