“The Gilded Age” is the title given…

“The Gilded Age” is the title given to this era by Mark Twain, in an 1873 satirical novel cowritten with Charles Dudley Warner.

The pursuit and display of private wealth are of paramount interest to both the powers and the public in an era of rapid industrialization fueled by the ruthless pursuit of profit, conspicuous consumption, government corruption and vulgar taste.

Twain and Warner originally had planned to issue the novel with illustrations by Thomas Nast.

The book is remarkable for two reasons—it is the only novel Twain writes with a collaborator, and its title will very quickly becomes synonymous with graft, materialism, and corruption in public life.

Warner, a writer and editor, is a neighbor and good friend of Mark Twain in Hartford, Connecticut.

According to Twain's biographer, Albert Bigelow Paine, their wives had challenged Twain and Warner at dinner to write a better novel than what they were used to reading.

Twain had written the first eleven chapters, followed by twelve chapters written by Warner.

Most of the remaining chapters were also written by only one of them, but the concluding chapters were attributed to joint authorship.

The entire novel had been completed between February and April 1873.

Contemporary critics, while praising its humor and satire, do not consider the collaboration a success because the independent stories written by each author do not mesh well.