The Gilded Age

by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner

Twain and Warner’s satirical novel exposes speculation, corruption, boosterism, and political performance in post–Civil War America.

At a glance The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today is the novel that gave an era its lasting name. Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner turn land schemes, lobbying, social ambition, and… The book is comic, sprawling, and pointedly observant about how public ideals become… Themes The novel explores corruption, speculation, social climbing, political spectacle…

The novel explores corruption, speculation, social climbing, political spectacle, self-invention, regional ambition, and the uneasy relationship between democracy and wealth.