Revision and Intention in Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee

Abstract

TN I889, Mark Twain got free advertising for his forthcoming ]keen and powerful satire of English Nobility and Royalty by free-swinging attacks on England and all things un-American. On December io, for example, in an interview in New York Times, he derided English publishers who refused print his utter contempt for their pitiful Lords and Dukes and then-with notable inconsistency-went on deplore dissemination of foreign literature in America. Americans, he asserted, could afford to look down and spit upon miserable titled nonentities. He was carried away by indignation as he bemoaned existence of perfectly respectable women in America who were willing to sell themselves anything bearing name of Duke. And finally, if we may trust interviewer, he stated flatly that his purpose in A Connecticut Yankee was get at Englishman by satirizing the shams, laws, and customs of today under pretense of dealing with England of sixth century. These remarks were in line with advertising policy Mark Twain and his publisher Fred Hall had agreed on-whatever makes fun of royalty and nobility ... will suit American public well'-and might have been largely a bid for sales. But Mark Twain's letters and notebook entries prove that his Anglophobia was not merely for public consumption. It is now generally agreed that during late i88o's he went through a phase of extreme hostility England-especially English aristocracy-accompanied by high confidence in beneficence of American democracy, capitalism, and technology. But precise effect of these shifting opinions on A Connecticut Yankee is less easy determine, although it is clear that Mark Twain's conception of novel was anvthing but stable during composition. The statement of inten-