What Mark Twain novel was co-authored with Charles Dudley Warner?

The Mark Twain novel co-authored with Charles Dudley Warner was The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today. Published in 1873, it is a satirical political novel about post–Civil War America, especially land speculation, greed, and schemes to get rich through government influence.

Twain and Warner were neighbors and friends in Hartford, Connecticut. According to the traditional account, their wives challenged them to write a better novel than the books they had been reading. Twain drafted much of the Hawkins family storyline, while Warner contributed substantial sections of the novel. The separate narrative threads do not always blend smoothly, a weakness contemporary reviewers noticed.

The title later became the name commonly applied to an era of American history marked by rapid economic growth alongside corruption and inequality. Twain and Warner borrowed the phrase from Shakespeare’s King John. The book is also notable as the only novel Twain completed with a literary collaborator, so the other options are solo Twain works.