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