Illustrating Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court with illustrations by Dan Beard, published by Charles L. Webster, 1889.
Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1889) began as a burlesque inspired by the thought of a practical nineteenth-century American finding himself in the midst of a society that, by his standards, is socially, technologically, and morally backward. As a means of poking fun at British culture and values, Twain included passages from Malory as examples of tedious storytelling, and he exaggerated the absurdities of medieval romance. But as he satirized the British nobility and such notions as advancement by birth and title rather than by natural ability, Twain realized that there were disturbing similarities between that system and the economic and social conditions in America.
These similarities were sometimes spelled out even more explicitly in the illustrations drawn by Dan (Daniel Carter) Beard (1850-1941) for the first edition of the novel, illustrations with which Twain was very pleased and in which Merlin, the representative of medieval superstition, is given the face of Tennyson. Beard’s illustrations called attention to the parallels between the feudal system in sixth-century Britain, in which those who do the work receive little profit, and both slavery in the South before the Civil War and the capitalism of robber barons in the late nineteenth century. A number of later artists have provided interesting illustrations for Connecticut Yankee, but no one has done it with the social awareness and satirical flair of Dan Beard.
Inscription by Dan Beard in A Connecticut Yankee of King Arthur's Court.
A Yankee at the Court of King Arthur, Chatto & Windus, 1893.
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Harper and Brothers, 1917.
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, William Morrow & Co./Books of Wonder, 1988.
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Whitman Publishing Company, 1955.
Published book and original cover art for the 1955 edition of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Frank Nicholas.
