Résumé
Résumé de Le Prétendant américain
Go deeper: the whole of Le Prétendant américain
About 4 h 20 min to read.À qui s’adresse-t-il ?
You will enjoy this if you like comic novels full of big talkers and wild schemes, satire that pokes at snobbery, and warm love stories.
De quoi parle ce livre ?
Would you give up a castle, a huge income and a title that reaches back to William the Conqueror, just to learn what you are worth on your own? That is the choice of young Viscount Berkeley in The American Claimant. He sails for Washington, certain that in America every man starts on equal ground.
Mark Twain published this comic novel in 1892. It brings back Colonel Mulberry Sellers, the white-haired dreamer from The Gilded Age, who believes he is the rightful Earl of Rossmore. You get the story, its people and the ideas behind the jokes, including a plan to buy Siberia for a republic.
Dans ce résumé
- 1A son gives up an earldomFree
- 2Colonel Sellers builds castles in the air
- 3The family plays at being nobility
- 4A fire, a mistaken death and a basket of ashes
- 5An English lord becomes Howard Tracy
- 6Hard times, a rooftop fight and a lost cause
- 7Paint, work and a meeting at Rossmore Towers
- 8Love, tests and an earl no one believes
- 9What the story says about equality and rank
- 10Dreamers, fraud and a satire told with weather
Point clé 1 sur 10
A son gives up an earldom
The story opens at Cholmondeley Castle in Warwickshire. The Earl of Rossmore, seventy years old, stern and rich, paces his breakfast room while his son stands by the window. The son is Viscount Berkeley, a mild man of nearly thirty who looks like a lamb in armor.
For ten years an American named Simon Lathers has written letters claiming the earldom. The son has read his evidence and thinks the proof is complete. The old earl admits he has known the facts for forty years. Morally the American is the rightful earl, he says, though legally the man has no more right than his dog.
That confession decides the matter. The family motto says to each man his own, and Berkeley cannot live under it as a sarcasm. So he will go to America and live as a plain man. His father calls it idiocy, yet lets him go.
Someone who gives up everything for a principle has to learn what the principle costs.
That’s 1 of 10 key points.
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Questions about Le Prétendant américain
What is The American Claimant about?
It follows a young English viscount who gives up his title to live as an ordinary man in Washington. There he meets Colonel Sellers, an inventor and dreamer who claims the same earldom, and Sellers's daughter Sally.
Who is Colonel Mulberry Sellers?
Sellers is a hopeful, generous schemer who first appeared in The Gilded Age. In this book he lives in Washington, claims to be the rightful Earl of Rossmore, and dreams up inventions that range from cursing phonographs to buying Siberia.
When did Mark Twain write The American Claimant?
Twain published it in 1892, and it is a work of fiction. It grew out of the play based on Sellers, and it reuses that character in a new comic story about class and money.
What does the weather appendix mean?
At the start Twain promises a book without weather and sends readers to an appendix at the back, which gathers storm passages from other authors. The device is a joke about how often novels pause for scenery.
What is the main message of The American Claimant?
The book suggests that rank is a matter of what people agree to believe, in England and in America. It also shows that giving up privilege is harder than praising equality, and that honest love can cut through both.
Cite this edition
Twain, Mark. The American Claimant. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-american-claimant.
Twain, M. (2026). The American claimant. Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-american-claimant (Original work published 1892)
Twain, Mark. The American Claimant. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-american-claimant.
@book{twain2026american,
author = {Twain, Mark},
title = {The American Claimant},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-american-claimant},
note = {First published 1892}
}
