Book
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court
First published 1889
Hank Morgan, a nineteenth-century Connecticut engineer, is struck unconscious and awakens in the legendary Britain of King Arthur. Condemned as a dangerous stranger, he predicts an eclipse and establishes himself as a magician more powerful than Merlin, then uses his new influence to build schools, factories, telegraph lines, newspapers and a secret modern army.
Hank believes technology and republican ideas can dismantle feudal privilege, but his reforms collide with the authority of the Church, the ambitions of Merlin and the courtly world surrounding Arthur, Guinevere, Lancelot and Morgan le Fay. The experiment ends in the mechanised slaughter of the Battle of the Sand-Belt, turning a comic time-travel adventure into a warning that technical power does not by itself create liberty or moral progress.
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