The Prince and the Pauper (Paperback-2023)

About the Book

What is the fate of two unknowingly identical boys who exchange their lives? The Prince and the Pauper by Mark Twain is a historical satire set in two very different socio-economic worlds of sixteenth-century England. The story of the novel centres around the lives of two boys born in London on the same day. Tom Canty, a pauper who lives with his abusive father, and Edward VI of England, son of Henry VIII of England. The two encounter each other and swap their lives, and thus destiny, realising they look identical. This situation alters the life of the two youngsters drastically, leaving them with personal revelations. The novel is a critique of social inequality and criticism that appearances are deceptive. The foremost idea of their exchange of roles and lifestyles is a commentary on class barriers and Twain's satiric expose of the concept, “clothes make the man”. The Prince and the Pauper has more than ninety-five popular-culture adaptations relevant to date.

About the Author

Mark Twain (1835–1910), whose real name was Samuel Langthorne Clemens, was an American Writer and was praised as the “greatest humourist the United States has produced”.

Clemens was born in Missouri, but later moved to Hannibal and grew up near the Mississippi River, where he loved to watch the riverboats pass by as a kid. Many of his stories were inspired by his own adventures on the river Mississippi. He started working as a typesetter and editorial assistant at the Western Union. He also worked for a local paper owned by his older brother, Orion, where he published his first known work called “A Gallant Fireman”. After gaining experience in writing articles and journalism, he started signing his name as “Mark Twain”, a river term meaning “two fathoms deep”. Mark Twain would be Clemens’s pen name for the rest of his life. In 1864, Clemens moved to San Francisco and worked for various newspapers. When his short story Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog was published and widely circulated in 1865 by the Saturday Press of New York, Mark Twain became a nationally known humourist. He contributed to the genre of Realism in America tremendously and is one of the most iconic writers of America. In 1872, he published Roughing It, an autobiographical account of his years in the West. His greatest works are The Adventures of Tom Sawyer published in 1876 and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in 1884.

Mark Twain died of a heart attack on April 21, 1910.