Hank Morgan, a nineteenth-century American who is accidentally returned to sixth-century England, is a powerful analysis of such issues as monarchy versus democracy and free will versus determinism, but it is also one of Twain's finest comic novels, still fresh and funny after more than 100 years.
In 1891, a young artist named Aubrey Beardsley walked into London bookseller Frederick Evans' shop and met J.M. Dent, then a new relatively new publisher. The book dealer and publisher were engaged in a conversation about Sir Thomas Malory's Morte Darthur which at the time was undergoing a renewed popularity...