The Gilded Age (1873) (The ^AOxford Mark Twain)

The Gilded Age by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner is a political roman clef--a direct and caustic attack on government politicians and big business in Post-Civil War America. It is the book that gave an era its name. Published in 1873 the first year of the second scandal-ridden Grant administration it is the first novel of consequence about Washington in all of American writing as Ward Just notes in his Introduction. The Gilded Age "gives Washington the aspect of a clumsy frontier town of ludicrous aspirations populated mainly by fools racketeers opportunists and parvenus most of them members of the United States Congress " Just writes. The Gilded Age trains its satire on corruption in politics business and the courts; "As Twain famously said there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress and the great triumph of The Gilded Age is that we are given chapter and verse on how the thievery is done." Just notes that readers will see for themselves whether Twain and Warners subtitle for The Gilded Age--"A Tale of To-Day"--is still accurate.