18 h 9 minAudiobook14 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at cost
Audiobook edition · 18 h 9 minPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What if the next great fortune is only gold paint over rotten wood?
In America after the Civil War, the Hawkins family holds tight to a dream: their vast tract of Tennessee land will make them rich. Washington Hawkins carries that hope toward the capital, where promoters, lobbyists and senators crowd around promises of wealth. Nearby stands Colonel Beriah Sellers, warm, talkative and always one deal away from a fortune.
Meanwhile, Philip Sterling and his charming friend Henry Brierly chase careers and railroad schemes. Ruth Bolton studies medicine and seeks a useful life of her own, while Laura Hawkins brings ambition and old wounds to Washington. In The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today, Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner turn these tangled hopes into comedy with an angry edge.
What you’ll discover
- A dream that grips Follow a family's stubborn hope as land and promised wealth shape their choices.
- An irresistible hopeful schemer Meet Colonel Sellers, whose warmth and endless plans make the pursuit of riches wonderfully comic.
- Politics beneath the polish Watch public good and private ambition mingle among Washington's senators, lobbyists and promoters.
- Women seeking their way Discover Laura and Ruth, two very different women confronting ambition and a hard society.
- Laughter with sharp teeth Explore how the hunger for wealth can blur a country's sense of honest work.
Who will love it
You will love this book if you enjoy comic satire, big talkers and lovable fools, or stories of money and politics in nineteenth century America.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A dreamer stakes his family on land
- A steamboat race ends in disaster
- Missouri brings Sellers and years of ups and downs
- Colonel Sellers feeds a visitor on dreams
- Laura learns her secret and meets Colonel Selby
- Two young men go west to make fortunes
- A senator and an appropriation set the machine in motion
- Speculation spreads like a fever through every class
- Two women chase different kinds of freedom
- A satire told by two voices
Who’s who
- Washington HawkinsA dreamy young man who waits for the family's Tennessee land to make him rich and longs to marry Louise Boswell.
- Laura HawkinsThe adopted daughter of the Hawkins family, beautiful and proud, who wants wealth, admiration and a place in the world.
- Colonel Beriah SellersA warm, tireless talker who is forever about to make millions and always ready to share his last turnip.
- Philip SterlingA cheerful Yale graduate with no clear career who hunts for coal and hopes to win Ruth Bolton.
- Harry BrierlyPhilip's charming friend, a boaster and born speculator who dreams of a box at the opera.
- Ruth BoltonA calm Quaker woman from Philadelphia who studies medicine against her family's wishes and means to make her own way.
- Senator Abner DilworthyA smooth, pious senator who speaks of helping the poor while he pushes his own bills through Congress.
- Clay HawkinsAn orphan adopted on the road to Missouri who grows into a steady worker and supports the family.
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The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today
by Mark Twain; Charles Dudley Warner · 1873
A Tennessee squire bets his children's future on seventy-five thousand acres of worthless-looking hills.
Medium level10–20 hours to readEnglish
Excellent
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In short
Squire Hawkins sits on a stile in a Tennessee hill village, watching the morning. He owns seventy-five thousand acres of rough land that nobody else wants.
The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today at a glance
- Reading time
- About 10 h 15 min8 h 10 min fast, 12 h 15 min slow
- Length
- 146,800 words
- Library level
- Medium longer sentences, everyday words
- First published
- 1873by Mark Twain; Charles Dudley Warner
Reading time at 238 words a minute (fast 300, slow 200). How long the classics take to read · Updated
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A dreamer stakes his family on land
Squire Hawkins lives in Obedstown, a scatter of fifteen houses in the Knobs of East Tennessee. His cabin is run down and the mail arrives once a month. Yet he reads and watches, and he believes that steamboats and railroads will remake America.
A letter comes from his old friend Beriah Sellers, urging him to move to Missouri. Before he goes, Hawkins shows his wife Nancy a secret. He has claimed seventy-five thousand acres in Tennessee. The black stuff in the stream bank is coal, he whispers, and when the railroads come the land will sell for a thousand dollars an acre.
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- 15-minute summary
- The key ideas of the whole book in about 14 minutes. A good first look, or a refresher.
Details
- First published
- 1873
- Language
- English
- Level
- Medium level
Cite this edition
Twain, Mark, and Charles Dudley Warner. The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-gilded-age-a-tale-of-today.
Twain, M., & Warner, C. D. (2026). The Gilded Age: A tale of today. Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-gilded-age-a-tale-of-today (Original work published 1873)
Twain, Mark, and Charles Dudley Warner. The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-gilded-age-a-tale-of-today.
@book{twain2026gilded,
author = {Twain, Mark and Warner, Charles Dudley},
title = {The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-gilded-age-a-tale-of-today},
note = {First published 1873}
}
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What is The Gilded Age about?
It follows the Hawkins family, Colonel Sellers, and a group of young people as they chase fortunes in land, railroads, mines and Congress. The story is a comic and sharp satire of greed and corruption in America after the Civil War.
Who wrote The Gilded Age and when?
Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner wrote it together in the early 1870s. Twain shaped much of the Hawkins and Sellers story, while Warner took the lead on Philip Sterling and Ruth Bolton.
Why is the book called The Gilded Age?
The title suggests a surface of gold laid over something plainer. The authors use it to describe a time of showy wealth and big schemes, and the phrase later became the name of the whole era.
The author
Mark Twain
1835–1910 · American humorist and novelist
Mark Twain was the pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens, an American author born in Missouri in 1835. He lived in Hartford, Connecticut, from 1874 to 1891. He wrote The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and The Prince and the Pauper (1881). He died in Redding, Connecticut, in 1910.
More by Mark Twain; Charles Dudley Warner
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