The American Claimant

Published in 1882 by Charles L. Webster, The American Claimant was Twain's sixth novel. The plot deals with the existence of an American, Colonel Mulberry Sellers, who is the true inheritor to an ancient British title. Through various pranks and escapades, Twain contrasts the attitudes and expectations of American and British aristocracy, the one moneyed the latter inherited, only to find them both essentially vacuous.