Gilded Age, A Tale of Today
Author: first_name: Mark
last_name: Twain
first_name: Charles Dudley
last_name: Warner
Language: English
Year: 1873

<i>The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today</i> is an 1873 novel by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner that satirizes greed and political corruption in post-Civil War America. The term <i>gilded age</i>, commonly given to the era, comes from the title of this book. Twain and Warner got the name from Shakespeare's King John (1595): "To gild refined gold, to paint the lily... is wasteful and ridiculous excess." Gilding a lily, which is already beautiful and not in need of further adornment, is excessive