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

CHAPTER 1

Camelot

CHAPTER 2

King Arthur's Court

CHAPTER 3

Knights of the Table Round

CHAPTER 4

Sir Dinadan the Humorist

CHAPTER 5

An Inspiration

CHAPTER 6

The Eclipse

CHAPTER 7

Merlin's Tower

CHAPTER 8

The Boss

CHAPTER 9

The Tournament

CHAPTER 10

Beginnings of Civilization

CHAPTER 11

The Yankee in Search of Adventures

CHAPTER 12

Slow Torture

CHAPTER 13

Freemen!

CHAPTER 14

"Defend Thee, Lord!"

CHAPTER 15

Sandy's Tale

CHAPTER 16

Morgan Le Fay

CHAPTER 17

A Royal Banquet

CHAPTER 18

In the Queen's Dungeons

CHAPTER 19

Knight-Errantry as a Trade

CHAPTER 20

The Ogre's Castle

CHAPTER 21

The Pilgrims

CHAPTER 22

The Holy Fountain

CHAPTER 23

Restoration of the Fountain

CHAPTER 24

A Rival Magician

CHAPTER 25

A Competitive Examination

CHAPTER 26

The First Newspaper

CHAPTER 27

The Yankee and the King Travel Incognito

CHAPTER 28

Drilling the King

CHAPTER 29

The Smallpox Hut

CHAPTER 30

The Tragedy of the Manor House

CHAPTER 31

Marco

CHAPTER 32

Dowley's Humiliation

CHAPTER 33

Sixth-Century Political Economy

CHAPTER 34

The Yankee and the King Sold as Slaves

CHAPTER 35

A Pitiful Incident

CHAPTER 36

An Encounter in the Dark

CHAPTER 37

An Awful Predicament

CHAPTER 38

Sir Launcelot and Knights to the Rescue

CHAPTER 39

The Yankee's Fight with the Knights

CHAPTER 40

Three Years Later

CHAPTER 41

The Interdict

CHAPTER 42

War!

CHAPTER 43

The Battle of the Sand Belt

CHAPTER-44

A Postscript by Clarence

Final E S. by M. T