Clemens’s fascination with English history developed with his visits to the country and his research for The Prince and the Pauper (1881), a tale of a royal and a commoner changing places so each could find out what he had been envying. He was fascinated by the Elizabethan period and its wholesome frankness about sex and bodily functions, which he celebrated in a short obscene work called 1601: Conversation as it Was by the Social Fireside, in the Time of the Tudors. The book was concealed to all but select male friends, but is now freely readable on the Internet. Continue reading from A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court
Tag Archives: Class
Something You Just Don’t Do in a Club
“Something You Just Don’t Do in a Club,” first published in The New Yorker (April 29, 1961), may seem in its first few pages to be out of touch with the average reader—assuming that the average reader has little experience with or interest in exclusive New York clubs for men of wealth—but the reversals and revelations toward the end of the story are worth the wait. Continue reading Something You Just Don’t Do in a Club
Country Fire
“Country Fire,” first published in The New Yorker (October 1, 1938), is an event-driven short story that seems to prefigure Gill’s later interest in architecture and preservation as well as his personal reckoning with a New York/Connecticut divide. While there are many people in the story, the only character that is developed is the community of this Connecticut country town, in amalgamation. If there is an antagonist other than the fire, it is the New Yorkers and the architect lurking in the outskirts of the town’s consciousness. Continue reading Country Fire
The Triumph
“The Triumph” was originally published in The New Yorker (February 1, 1941) and is described as Gill’s finest by the article on his fiction in Gale’s Contemporary Novelists. The story is set in Connecticut and is centered on an elderly woman and her daughter clinging to the mores and social distinctions of the Old World in a way that contrasts ironically with their present circumstances. “The Triumph” ends in a subtle revelation of character that exposes a layer to the story the reader may have missed and increases the title’s irony. Continue reading The Triumph