Connecticut Yankee

Another point of origin for a kind of sf.

From the University of Virginia, a useful guide to contexts for Twain's Yankee.

An 1889 edition of Connecticut Yankee.

About the production of Yankee and the illustrations by Dan Beard; a few of Twain's favorites.

A symbol for Connecticut.

The marvelous lightning rod.

Mark Twain's house in Hartford (built 1873-74); a virtual tour.

Illustrating Malory's Morte d'Arthur with 1890s artist Aubrey Beardsley.

P. T. Barnum, The Art of Money Getting (1886).

A full suit of armor. Heavy, isn't it?

Contemporary recreational armor.

The advent of outdoor electric lights.

An early telephone (1876).

Knights on pennyfarthing bicycles.

From the Mark Twain Museum in Missouri, a Twain timeline and brief publishing history.

The infamous Paige Compositor. More about it.

Remembering the U.S. Civil War-- dead soldiers at Antietam; anticipating trench warfare.

Does all sf tend to become military sf?

Key lines from Twain's novel: "Training is all there is"... "any Established church"... "a man is a man at bottom."

More key lines: the "ossifying" effects of slavery. Gutenberg, Arkwright, and so on, the real creators.

What Arkwright invented: the water-frame loom. A late nineteenth century Singer sewing machine.

Mark Twain and Nicola Tesla on public radio. (They don't become close till after the Yankee, though.)

An ad for tooth polish (1913).

The past is a place (apologies to Bud Foote.)



Hawthorne: a famous garden.

Hawthorne: Genesis 3, the Fall.

Hawthorne: the Roman god Vertumnus, a dude made in part of fruit.

Artificial selection gave us maize, or American corn.

The dark purple flower of doom.

Nightshade's purple flowers and dark fruit.



An apparently reliable academically sponsored reading edition of "Rappaccini's Daughter," from Jack Lynch's miscellany of online texts.