Mark Twain: Gilded Age and Other Novels

This Gilded Age collection encompasses Mark Twain's literary career, starting with his first novel-length, fictional work, The Gilded Age, which he co-wrote with Charles Dudley Warner... and carrying us through to his final work, The Mysterious Stranger, which was left in manuscript format upon his death.

Starting Out

The Gilded Age is not only an introduction to Mark Twain's imagination and prose, it's also the work that named the era, a time of gaudy excess and a new class of wealth, political corruption, and westward expansion.

Twain co-wrote the novel in response to a "dinner-party challenge." Editor Hamlin L. Hill writes, "Twain and his Hartford neighbor Charles Dudley Warner, complaining about the low quality of the novels their wives were reading, were challenged to do better." So, they created this novel, with presented the age: all its hopes, dreams, and disappointments. The authors show how a woman who is at the pinnacle of society can quickly fall to the depths of loneliness and destitution — not so much financial, but emotional and physical emptiness, a lacking that can't be fulfilled with money, power, or love.

Continuations on a Story

The collection continues with a sequel, The American Claimant (1892), which is a continuation of the story of Colonel Sellers, a character introduced in The Gilded Age. In this novel, Colonel Sellers is full of hope for the future. He's the rightful duke, after all; and, his inventions are bound to bring him riches sooner or later (he believes).

Of course, Colonel Sellers jumps from one thing to another, never quite satisfied, often losing his money and everything with every hair-brained scheme. He can't quite seem to say "No" to the downtrodden, so they take advantage of his kindness; and he's left off in a worse situation.

When Mark Twain was working on The American Claimant, he wrote, "I wake up in the night laughing at its ridiculous situations." Once you get through all of the schemes, the royalties, romance, and nonsense... you move on to the rest of this Mark Twain collection.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer were two of Twain's most famous works, so he had to continue the story a bit further. This volume offers two sequels: Tom Sawyer Abroad (1894) and Tom Sawyer, Detective (1896).

In Tom Sawyer Abroad, Tom, Huck and Jim travel across the Atlantic Ocean in a hot-air balloon. They started out with a mad-genius professor, who wants to prove all of his critics wrong by crossing the ocean in a fantastic balloon. Huck says of the fellow: "As near as I can make out, geniuses think they know it all, and so they won't take people's advice, but always go their own way..." The Professor's way didn't last long, until he left Tom, Huck and Jim to their own devices. Huck says, "And it got lonesomer and lonesomer. There was the big sky up there, empty and awful deep, and the ocean down there without a thing on it but just the waves... It made a body feel creepy, it was so creepy and unaccountable."

From their height, they create stories about the people they see below. Huck says, "you know the more you join in with people in their joys and their sorrows, the more nearer and dearer they come to be to you..." They see wild animals and bandits, but they also experience some of the greatest wonders of the world.

Of course, Tom Sawyer, Detective presents Tom as just that. He's a version of Sherlock Holmes--sure to figure out the ins and outs of the case before anyone else. His uncle has, after all, been wrongly accused of murder. So, Tom Sawyer is on the case to get him off... and to bring the murderers and thieve to justice. In the end, Tom (and his trusty sidekick, Huck) are heroes. They receive the reward, and the eternal gratefulness of Tom's uncle.