Review: 1601: Conversation as it Was by the Social Fireside in the Time of the Tudors

1601: Conversation as it Was by the Social Fireside in the Time of the Tudors by Mark Twain
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I came across the fact of this work's existence in reading Autobiography of Mark Twain: The Complete and Authoritative Edition, Volume 1, Part 2 where Mark Twain claims it was a by-product of his studies to internalize Elizabethan language for A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. He does seem to have deeply and successfully internalized this mode of speech, and deep inside it met his earthiest brand of humor. The forged result had samizdat-like life for decades. That underground publishing and the historical background of the work is covered in the annotations of this edition by Franklin J. Meine.

I found the Gutenberg production by David Widger of this edition online at archive.org and gutenberg.org.

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