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childhood experiences for three of his masterpieces: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), Life on the Mississippi (1883), and, finally, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884–85), on which he worked for nearly a decade. Another vein, historical fiction, resulted in The Prince and the Pauper (1882), A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1889), and Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc (1896). He continued his interest in travel writing with A Tramp Abroad (1880) and Following the Equator (1897). Literary associates during these years included such eminent authors as Bret Harte, George Washington Cable, Joel Chandler Harris, and the most important and long-lasting of them all, William Dean Howells.

During these years, Twain embarked on numerous business ventures, most of them unsuccessful. A notable exception was his undertaking to publish the memoirs of the terminally ill Ulysses S. Grant in 1885, but this was more than balanced by his typical experiences. His most disastrous investment was in a typesetting machine designed by James W. Paige. Twain lost a fortune in that project, and its failure contributed to his declaration of bankruptcy in 1894.

Despite his public image as a humorist and the genial author of seemingly heartwarming tales of an idyllic American boyhood, Twain was at heart a serious and even gloomy thinker, particularly about religion. Even as early as Roughing It, but certainly from Huckleberry Finn onward, it is possible to find evidences in his writings of deepening pessimism increasingly thinly concealed by irony. The deaths of two of his daughters, Susy and Jean, added to the bitterness of his reflections. His novel The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson (1894), an indictment of slavery, was not artistically successful, and his late works, such as “To the Person Sitting in Darkness” (1901), “The War Prayer” (1905), and “King Leopold’s Soliloquy” (1905) are overtly critical of imperialism and colonialism. The privately published What Is Man? (1906) is an extremely bleak expression of determinism, and the posthumously published Mysterious Stranger fragments and Letters from the Earth, both criticisms of religious teachings, are among the darkest things he wrote. In his last years, his financial troubles finally resolved, but alone except for his daughter Clara, Twain settled near Redding, Connecticut, and died in his mansion, Stormfield, on April 21, 1910.

2006 Modern Library Paperback Edition

Introduction copyright © 2006 by Ron Powers

Mark Twain biographical note copyright © 1993 by Random House, Inc.

Charles Dudley Warner biographical note copyright © 2006 by Random House, Inc.

Notes and Reading Group Guide copyright © 2006 by Random House, Inc.

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Modern Library, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

MODERN LIBRARY and the TORCHBEARER Design are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Twain, Mark 1835–1910.

The Gilded Age / Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner; introduction by Ron Powers;

notes by Joseph Csicsila; selected illustrations by Augustus Hoppin . . . [et al.].

p. cm. — (Modern Library classics)

1. Political corruption—Fiction. 2. Washington (D.C.)—Fiction. 3. Legislators—Fiction.

4. Speculation—Fiction. 5. Businessmen—Fiction. I. Warner, Charles Dudley, 1829–1900.

II. Hoppin, Augustus, 1828–1896. III. Title. IV. Series.

PS1311.A1 2006

813’.4—dc22 200505438

www.modernlibrary.com

www.randomhouse.com

eISBN: 978-0-307-43226-1

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