SOURCE: “‘Iron Dudes and White Savages in Camelot’: The Influence of Dime-Novel Sensationalism on Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court,” in American Literary Realism, 1870-1910, Vol. 27, No. 1, Fall, 1994, pp. 42-58.

In the essay below, Pfitzer argues that Twain transformed the formulaic components of dime novels into a masterpiece of literature.

In the summer of 1884, Mark Twain was enjoying a rare moment of self-satisfaction. Having just finished writing the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn after long delays, he was hard at work on a sequel which by contrast seemed to be writing itself—a western novel tentatively entitled Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer among the Indians.¹ Fulfilling Huck's promise to “light out for the Territory” at the conclusion of Huck Finn, Twain sends his rambunctious hero out West to experience life among “the Injuns.”² In preparation for this relocation of Huck from the soggy riverbanks of the Midwest...