The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today is a novel by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner first published in 1873. It satirizes greed and political corruption in post-Civil War America. Although not one of Twain's best-known works, it has appeared in more than 100 editions since its original publication. 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 wrote with a collaborator, and its title very quickly became synonymous with graft, materialism, and corruption in public life. The novel gave the era its nickname: the period of U.S. history from the 1870s to about 1900 is now referred to as the Gilded Age. Plot summary The novel concerns the efforts of a poor rural family to become affluent by selling in a timely manner the of unimproved land acquired by their patriarch, Silas "Si" Hawkins. After several adventures in Tennessee, the family fails to sell the land and Si Hawkins dies. The rest of the Hawkins story line focuses on their beautiful adopted daughter Laura. In the early 1870s, she travels to Washington, D.C. to become a lobbyist. With a senator's help, she enters society and attempts to persuade congressmen to require the federal government to purchase the land. A parallel story written by Warner concerns two young upperclass men, Philip Sterling and Henry Brierly, who seek their fortunes in land in a novel way. They make a journey with a group intent on surveying land in Tennessee in order to acquire it for speculation. Philip is good-natured but plodding. He is in love with Ruth Bolton, an aspiring physician and feminist. Henry is a born salesman, charming but superficial. The Hawkins sections, including several humorous sketches, were written by Twain. Examples are the steamboat race that leads to a wreck (Chapter IV) and Laura's toying with a clerk in a Washington bookstore (Chapter XXXVI). Notable too is the comic presence throughout the book of the eternally optimistic and eternally broke Colonel Beriah Sellers, a Micawber-like character. The character was named Escol Sellers in the first edition and changed to Beriah when an actual George Escol Sellers of Philadelphia objected. A real Beriah Sellers then turned up, causing Twain to use the name Mulberry Sellers in The American Claimant. The Sellers character was modeled after James Lampton, Twain's maternal cousin, and