Realism is defined, in literary terms, as "a literary method and a particular range of subject"(H. Realism's prevalence emerged in the late 19th century as the new nation came into sight, born out of the ashes of the great American Civil War. Straying from the "less consciously artistic and more honest" Romantics, American Realist set out to encompass the turn of the century with their own unique style of rhetoric and vernacular. "Where romanticists transcend the immediate to find the ideal, and naturalists plumb the actual or superficial to find the scientific laws that control its actions, realists center their attention to a remarkable degree on the immediate, the here and now, the specific action, and the verifiable consequence" (H.H. A Handbook to Literature).
In American literature, the term "realism" encompasses the period of time from 1865 to the turn of the century during which such famous authors as Mark Twain, Rebecca Harding Davis, Sarah Orne Jewett, Jack London, Henry James and others wrote fiction devoted to accurate representation and an exploration of American lives. As the United States grew rapidly after the Civil War, as did the increasing of the economy and the rate of literacy, the rapid growth in industrialism and urbanization, an expanding population due to immigration, and the emergence of the middle-class. .
As the era known as the American Age of Realism arose, no one was more acclaimed than the American writer Mark Twain. Mark Twain, pseudonym of Samuel Langhorne Clemens, was America's naissance writer and humorist, whose best work is characterized by broad, often irreverent humor or blatant social satire. Twain's writing is also known for realism of place and language, memorable characters, and hatred of hypocrisy and oppression. .
Throughout Twain's works the motif of satirizing the idea of the individual versus society customarily develops. In Twain's allegory "The Facts Concerning the Recent Carnival of Crime in Connecticut", he closely examines and parodies societies definition of the individual.
