Warner, Charles Dudley

The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (Penguin Classics)

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Witty assessment of post-Civil War industry and politics. A classic.
"For men are subject to their own impulses as soon as they have parted company with reason"
Let's Do A Deal
Greed
A Tale of Today

The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (Penguin Classics)
Mark Twain , and Charles Dudley Warner
Manufacturer: Penguin Classics
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 014043920X
Release Date: 2001-08-28

Book Description

First published in 1873, The Gilded Age is both a biting satire and a revealing portrait of post-Civil War America-an age of corruption when crooked land speculators, ruthless bankers, and dishonest politicians voraciously took advantage of the nation's peacetime optimism. With his characteristic wit and perception, Mark Twain and his collaborator, Charles Dudley Warner, attack the greed, lust, and naivete of their own time in a work which endures as a valuable social document and one of America's most important satirical novels.

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The elders of the party were not long in discovering the fact, which almost all travelers to the west soon find out; that the water was poor. It must have been by a lucky premonition of this that they all had brandy flasks with which to qualify the water of the country; and it was no doubt from an uneasy feeling of the danger of being poisoned that they kept experimenting, mixing a little of the dangerous and changing fluid, as they passed along.

Customer Reviews:

Witty assessment of post-Civil War industry and politics. A classic........2007-06-14

Witty, engaging and expertly crafted, The Gilded Age reveals Twain's and Warner's cynicism of American business practices (rampant, unrestrained speculation) and Washington politics post-Civil War. For the most part, the main characters are rather flawed. The sometimes loathsome sometimes loveable Col. Eschol Sellers is a well-meaning huckster. Many of the figures on the periphery are out-and-out crooks, dishonest, slimy sorts that would do or say anything for a buck. The only winner in the end is Philip Sterling, the only character willing to work hard to make an honest fortune.

Some critics have said that this book was Twain's answer to Ben Franklin's elevation of the so-called Protestant work ethic and something of a critique of American capitalism. That conclusion, in my view, is misguided. While Twain's and Warner's contempt of corruption and dishonest business dealings is glaringly obvious from the way the stories are told, they quite as obviously seem to honor those who truly earned their fortunes or made something of themselves by honest, productive effort. Sterling is an example of that. That is the essence of the Protestant work ethic.

Social commentary aside, like Twain's other work, The Gilded Age is terribly funny. About every other page, one of his brilliant witicisms will make you laugh out loud, a situation that can be a bit awkward when reading the book in public.

"For men are subject to their own impulses as soon as they have parted company with reason".......2006-10-09

Literary legend has it that Twain and Warner's wives had prompted these two authors to work together on The Gilded Age. Some versions of the story have it a dinner party challenge-- where the two men were dared to work together in order to produce a novel better than the popular fiction that their wives were reading. Whatever the true cause, it is an interesting experiment. The Gilded Age is a book worth reading, particularly if you are interested in the history or the popular novels of the 1870s.

The story follows the fortune of the good but silly Hawkins family and their children, both biological and adopted. The Hawkins family is chiefly concerned with the idea of making their fortune, and invest a huge amount of hope and trust in their twin poles of "the Tennesee Land" and the schemes of their family friend, Colonel Beriah Sellers.

The plot is extremely melodramatic, much in keeping with popular fiction of the day. Hidden identities, lost parents, ruined women and handsome cads populate the storyline. Mixed in with this is the classic Twain "pen warmed up in Hell"-- he takes on the corruption of the era, pointing his venom at Congress, the railroad, and at the "reconstruction efforts" theoretically designed to improve conditions in the south while actually being little more then efforts to line pockets, thinly disguised.

It is occasionally an uneven ride. The melodramatic plot and characters are often a very odd fit with the vicious,dry and funny commentary that is made about corruption and public morals. I think it is more enjoyable if you have had exposure to contemporary writers such as Mary Jane Holmes. I kept thinking of this as The English Orphans on crack to try to keep the context in mind.

Despite the uneven quality, I really enjoyed the book. The political commentary may miss on some of the specific scandals, but the general points should still be pointy enough to make current politicians wince. And, like most Twain efforts (even a co-authored book like this one) it is often riotously funny.

The introduction to the Penguin edition claims that the Gilded Age will never be forgotten for three reasons:

-- its association with Mark Twain
-- the accomplishment of having given a title to a political era
-- its status as a shockingly accurate mirror of period corruption

I will not argue with that analysis.

Highly recommmended. Kudos to the Penguin Classic edition for the genuinely helpful introduction by Louis J. Budd and the useful notes and appendices at the back of the book.

Let's Do A Deal.......2004-05-25

"The Gilded Age" is a story of corruption and get-rich-quick schemes in the USA after the Civil War. The fulcrum of the book is the Hawkins family, and in particular Laura - a Washington lobbyist whose personal life is deeply flawed. But beyond the Hawkins family, Twain and Warner introduce a cast of characters all of whom have a stake in the expanding US economy (through more or less shady dealing) or in the deep corruption of the political system. It is as if the whole economy was one great poker game, with most of the players cheating shamelessly.

At times "The Gilded Age" is a very uneven novel, perhaps to be expected in a collaborative work. The early chapters especially have a very disjointed feel: time and location leap about too much, the narrative creaks. It was as if the authors had not yet sorted out who the main characters were to be, nor where the majority of the action was to take place. Indeed, as the novel develops, the main scene changes from the mid-West to Washington DC. Once this shift has taken place, the novel becomes more settled, with more scope for satire and character development.

How effective is the novel? Well, many of the references and allusions have lost their impact due to the passage of time, and the limitations of the collaborative nature of the book (as mentioned above) limit rather than help. I prefer Gore Vidal's "American Saga" novels, but in its favour "The Gilded Age" (perhaps due to its proximity to events) does have a feel of authenticity, and does provide another warning that pursuit of money and personal gain to the exclusion of other societal values is highly damaging.

G Rodgers

Greed.......2004-02-18

The post-Civil War years were a time of rapid industrialization in America, aided and abetted by burgeoning plans to build a transcontinental railroad. Many people saw an opportunity to get a piece of the action, to speculate with family savings, the little that there were, in hopes of making millions of dollars in return. Investing in coal mining was one example. It is against this background that _The Gilded Age_ takes place.

Many in Congress saw an opportunity to support various projects that were supposedly for the public good, e.g. building a university for the newly freed slaves upon land, located in Tenneesee, bequeathed by a family patriarch to his children. These schemes were also meant to line many people's pockets. The novel's Senator Dilworthy supports various liberal causes and "family values," i.e. Sunday school education, but is also thoroughly corrupt.

_The Gilded Age_ is meant to be a morality tale where everyone receives his just deserts: the evil or those just plain greedy are punished, including a vengence seeking young woman deeply wronged by her married lover, and the good and the conscientious are rewarded. While the book occasionally gets bogged down in the scandalous details of this young woman's love life, _The Gilded Age_ is often an interesting, lively and educational glance into the manners of 1870s America.

A Tale of Today.......2001-07-17

The literary criticism you can get from the Oxford edition (check your local library); the commentary is thorough (which parts did Twain write? which parts Warner?) and informative. My reasons for recommending this book have nothing to do with its literary value (spotty) and everything to do with its subtitle. Every now and then an old book teaches us that much of what we take to be modern and sophisticated is truly old hat. One of the best descriptions of the Cold War was written by Thucydides, and one of the best depictions of the go go dot.com economy was written by Twain. Substitute web sites for depots and bandwidth for rails and the conversations in this book could have been overhead on cel phones in San Jose. IPO's and bubbles are not twenty-first century innovations: as Twain shows us,it may be possible to get rich from hard work, but it's more tempting to get rich by looting the pockets of the uninformed. Senator Dilworthy's dedication to pork evokes Byrd, and we learn lecherous behavior in Congress didn't start with Condit. An entertaining validation of Ecclesiates: there truly is nothing new under the sun.

My Summer in a Garden (Modern Library Gardening)

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Not Your Usual Garden Book
Behold the onion....
Only read Warner
Philosopher's Garden

My Summer in a Garden (Modern Library Gardening)
Charles Dudley Warner
Manufacturer: Modern Library
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0375759468
Release Date: 2002-02-19

Book Description

Oft quoted but seldom credited,Charles Dudley Warner’s My Summer in a Garden is a classic of American garden writing and was a seminal early work in the then fledgling genre of American nature writing. Warner—prominent in his day as a writer and newspaper editor—was a dedicated amateur gardener who shared with Mark Twain, his close friend and neighbor, a sense of humor that remains deliciously fresh today.

In monthly dispatches, Warner chronicles his travails in the garden, where he and his cat, Calvin, seek to ward off a stream of interlopers, from the neighbors’ huge-hoofed cows and thieving children, to the reviled, though “propagatious,” pusley weed. To read Warner is to join him on his rounds of his beloved vegetable patch, to feel the sun on his sore back, the hoe in his blistered hands, and yet, like him, never to lose sight of “the philosophical implications of contact with the earth, and companionship with gently growing things.”

This Modern Library edition is published with an extensive new Introduction by Allan Gurganus, author of Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All and The Practical Heart.

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The love of dirt is among the earliest of passions, as it is the latest. Mud-pies gratify one of our first and best instincts. So long as we are dirty, we are pure. Fondness for the ground comes back to a man after he has run the round of pleasure and business, eaten dirt, and sown wild-oats, drifted about the world, and taken the wind of all its moods.

Customer Reviews:

Not Your Usual Garden Book.......2004-05-13

MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN is a slim volume in a series of neglected gardening classics being reprinted by Modern Library, however, to suggest the subject of the book is limited to gardening is to do it a great disservice. In the guise of a week-by-week account of one summer in his garden Charles Dudley Warner waxes philosophical on religion, society, animals, schoolboys, hunters and neighbors as well as plants. Its style will feel familiar to readers of the later literary garden-musings of E.B. White and Elizabeth Von Arnim. Although Warner died in 1900 his language is remarkably fresh and the complaints and joys of gardening familiar. The side comments on women's suffrage only remind one with surprise that in spite of the similarities he was living in a very different time.

I found the book when tracking down the following Warner quote, "Regrets are idle; yet history is one long regret. Everything might have turned out so differently!" and in reading the book discovered other gems such as, "Nothing shows one who his friends are, like prosperity and ripe fruit. I had a good friend in the country, whom I almost never visited except in cherry-time. By your fruits you shall know them." It is the gentle humor and subtle wisdom of his observations that elevate Warner's book above the ordinary. Being, at present, a city dweller transplanted from childhood gardens, I found reading the book a great comfort.

Behold the onion...........2002-05-18

Charles Dudley Warner appears to have lived an enviable life. He was educated when most men did not have an opportunity to become educated. He was editor and publisher of the 'Hartford Courant' and lived in Hartford next door to Samuel Clements. Warner was not only a neighbor but a good friend of Mark Twain with whom he co-authored THE GILDED AGE, and with whom he seems to have shared a sense of humor. Warner's writing is insightful and funny, but not always politically correct according to 21st Century U.S. standards. Allen Gurganus introduces the book with an overly long essay.

In MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN Warner shares 19 weeks of life in his garden (one growing season). His garden is located in Hartford at the edge of a game preserve. During the course of the summer, President Grant is in Hartford and stops by for a visit. As the men sit in Warner's yard, Grant says he can hardly wait to retire to his own garden as he is fed up with politics. Warner has been fighting pusley in his garden and he and Grant discuss the advantage of inviting immigrants who eat pusley and would soon rid the country of both problems.

Warner has various encounters with: hunters tracking quail who stray from the game preserve, one of whom claims he is looking for a lost chicken; small boys who eat berries from his vines and gather nuts from his trees; birds who attack his pea pods, the neighbor's hens who range too freely until he is looking for one to fill a pot; and the owner of a cow pastured in his yard. In spite of drought, theft, and green worms, at the end of the summer Warner is able to put aside enough vegetables to feel he has accomplished something and then his wife Polly takes credit for the work.

Of interest to me is that more than 100 years after Warner published his book, U.S. gardeners can still complain about some of the same things Warner complained about--and more. Most gardeners know that the U.S. has been infested with a whole array of pests and diseases that were not around when Warner gardened. For example, three new plagues including the Varroa mite have attacked American honey bees since the 1980s. Partly these attacks are owing to the introduction of containerized shipments that cannot be inspected and may hold verboten materials (plants, animals, insects). Partly these problems are owing to flagrant violations by individuals who believe U.S. laws concerning the transport of "foreign" plants do not apply to them. Warner's worries about green worms in his celery, witch grass in his potato hills, and pulsey seem mild in comparison.

Only read Warner.......2002-03-13

I was intrigued by the title and sold by the exerpt. Charles Dudley Warner is fun. But skip the opening 30 pages or so. It's not that the other gentlemen don't write well, but they're not exactly fun. Besides, I didn't buy it to read a discussion of his more boring, 'professional' work in all those pages numbered with tiny Roman numerals. So go directly to Warner's first essay (which is the exerpt) on page 11.

Philosopher's Garden.......2001-08-02

Nicely written and witty book about the pleasures of gardening and its relationship to other aspects of life.

My Summer in a Garden [EasyRead Comfort Edition]

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My Summer in a Garden [EasyRead Comfort Edition]
Charles Dudley Warner
Manufacturer: ReadHowYouWant.com
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 142500637X
Release Date: 2006-10-01

Book Description

A wonderful book by Warner that showcases his love of nature. He shares his experiences that he enjoyed living close to nature for 19 weeks. The focal point is his garden where several famous people visited him including the American president Ulysses Simpson Grant. The book contains vibrant descriptions of flora and fauna as well as the author's views on life and other issues. Riveting!

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Washington Irving
Charles Dudley Warner
Manufacturer: Hard Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: 1406928224
Release Date: 2006-11-03

My Summer in a Garden [EasyRead Edition]

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My Summer in a Garden [EasyRead Edition]
Charles Dudley Warner
Manufacturer: ReadHowYouWant.com
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1425001998
Release Date: 2006-10-01

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The People for Whom Shakespeare Wrote
Charles Dudley Warner
Manufacturer: Adamant Media Corporation
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1402178514
Release Date: 2001-02-19

Book Description

This Elibron Classics book is a facsimile reprint of a 1897 edition by Harper & Brothers, London and New York.

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The question is often asked, but I consider it an idle one, whether Shakespeare was appreciated in his own day as he is now. That the age, was unable to separate him from itself, and see his great stature, is probable; that it enjoyed him with a sympathy to which we are strangers there is no doubt.

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Charming
One of the greatest books ever written

Being A Boy
Charles Dudley Warner
Manufacturer: Kessinger Publishing, LLC
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Book Description

One of the best things in the world to be is a boy; it requires no experience, though it needs some practice to be a good one. The disadvantage of the position is that it does not last long enough; it is soon over; just as you get used to being a boy, you have to be something else, with a good deal more work to do and not half so much fun.

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Customer Reviews:

Charming.......2004-09-01

Charles Dudley Warner (1829-1900) is largely forgotten today, remembered for his coauthoring of The Gilded Age with Mark Twain, if at all. However, if you have heard the axiom that, "Politics makes strange bed-fellows," then you have heard of Mr. Warner, for it comes from his remarkable book, My Summer in a Garden.

In this book, Mr. Warner reminisces about childhood in rural New England. With a charming sense of nostalgia, the author tells of a young boy's hopes and dreams, his hard work, his hard play and his easy loafing, his delicious triumphs and his shameful mishaps. Overall, I found this to be a wonderfully charming look at being young during a bygone day and age, and of being young even today. I loved this book and highly recommend it to you.

One of the greatest books ever written.......2000-01-22

This book is a wonderful read; simple yet complex at the same time. It is an indepth look at exactly what it's like growing up as a young man, full of first experiances. His views of society are insightful yet subtle as they are interjected periodically in the middle of a story. I could'nt help but feel a strong connection with the author. It's like his experiances back then are the same we face today. A delightful book, and a must read for any young man. Get a hold of this book any way you can!

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As we were saying
Charles Dudley Warner
Manufacturer: Harper & Bros
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

Book Description

1891. Contents: Rose Chrysanthemum; The Red Bonnet; The Loss in Civilization; Social Screaming; Does Refinement Kill Individuality?; The Directoire Gown; The Mystery of the Sex; The Clothes of Fiction; The Broad A; Chewing Gum; Women in Congress; Shall Women Propose?; Frocks and the Stage; Altruism; Social Clearing-House; The Dinner-Table Talk; Naturalization; Art of Governing; Love of Display; Value of the Commonplace; The Burden of Christmas; The Responsibility of Writers; The Cap and Gown; A Tendency of the Age; and A Locoed Novelist.

A Library of the World's Best Literature Ancient and Modern: Volume V

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A Library of the World's Best Literature Ancient and Modern: Volume V
Charles Dudley (editor) Warner
Manufacturer: The International Society
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000R4PKLS

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Gilded Age
Mark and Charles Dudley Warner Twain
Manufacturer: University of Washington press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000JOBQU0

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