Editing Gilded Age (section)

==The name and the era==
[[File:Gildedage.jpg|thumb|upright|First edition cover of ''The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today'' (1873), a collaborative novel by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner]]

The term ''Gilded Age'' was applied to the era by 1920s historians who took the term from one of [[Mark Twain]]'s lesser-known novels, ''[[The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today]]'' (1873). The book, co-written with [[Charles Dudley Warner]], satirized the promised "[[Golden age (metaphor)|golden age]]" after the Civil War, portrayed as an era of serious social problems masked by a thin [[Gilding|gold gilding]] of economic expansion.<ref name="dictionary-gilded-age">{{cite book |last1=Upchurch|first1=Thomas Adams |title=Historical Dictionary of the Gilded Age |date=2009 |publisher=Scarecrow Press |page=82 |isbn=978-0-8108-6299-9}}</ref> In the 1920s, and 1930s, the metaphor "Gilded Age" began to be applied to a designated [[Periodization|period]] in American history. The term was adopted by literary and cultural critics as well as historians, including [[Van Wyck Brooks]], [[Lewis Mumford]], [[Charles Austin Beard]], [[Mary Ritter Beard]], [[Vernon Louis Parrington]], and [[Matthew Josephson]]. For them, ''Gilded Age'' was a pejorative term for a time of materialistic excesses and widespread political corruption.<ref>Richard Schneirov, "Thoughts on Periodizing the Gilded Age: Capital Accumulation, Society, and Politics, 1873-1898" ''Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era'' 5#3 (2006), pp. 189-224 [http://www.jstor.org/stable/25144440 online]</ref>

The early half of the Gilded Age roughly coincided with the middle portion of the [[Victorian Era]] in Britain and the [[Belle Époque]] in France. With respect to eras of American history, historical views vary as to when the Gilded Age began, ranging from starting right after the Civil War ended in 1865, or 1873, or as the [[Reconstruction Era]] ended in 1877.<ref name=Nichols2017>Nichols, Christopher M.; Nancy C. Unger (2017). ''A Companion to the Gilded Age and Progressive Era''. Wiley, p. 7.</ref> The date marking the end of the Gilded Age also varies. The ending is generally given as the beginning of the [[Progressive Era]] in the 1890s (sometimes the [[1896 United States presidential election|United States presidential election of 1896]]).<ref>{{cite book |last=Marcus |first=Robert |title=Grand Old Party: Political Structure in the Gilded Age, 1880–1896 |url=https://archive.org/details/grandoldpartypol0000marc |url-access=registration |year=1971 |publisher=Oxford University Press |location=New York |oclc=108077}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Grob |first1=Gerald N. |last2=Billias |first2=George Athan |title=From Jacksonian Democracy to the Gilded Age-Historical Interpretations: 1815–1896 |year=1972 |publisher=Free Press |location=New York |edition=2nd |isbn=978-0-02-912910-4 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=aPjVOQAACAAJ |access-date=August 25, 2020 |archive-date=January 20, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230120194034/https://books.google.com/books?id=aPjVOQAACAAJ |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Leary |first1=William |author1-link= William M. Leary |last2=Link |first2=Arthur S. |title=Progressive Era and the Great War, 1896–1920 |year=1978 |edition=2nd |isbn=978-0-88295-574-2 |publisher=A. H. M. |location=Arlington Heights, Illinois}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |title=Welcome to the Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era |last=Nugent |first=Walter |journal=The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era |year=2002 |volume=1 |pages = 7–9|number=1 |quote=importance of these six decades in American history … between 1865 and the 1920s|jstor = 25144281|doi=10.1017/S1537781400000050 |s2cid=164198505 }}</ref>