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  • Published: 1 December 1997
  • ISBN: 9781101567968
  • Imprint: PEN US eBook Adult
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 224

The Prince and the Pauper





Puffin Classics: the definitive collection of timeless stories, for every child

Set in sixteenth-century England, Mark Twain’s classic “tale for young people of all ages” features two identical-looking boys—a prince and a pauper—who trade clothes and step into each other’s lives. While the urchin, Tom Canty, discovers luxury and power, Prince Edward, dressed in rags, roams his kingdom and experiences the cruelties inflicted on the poor by the Tudor monarchy. As Christopher Paul Curtis observes in his Introduction, The Prince and the Pauper is “funny, adventurous, and exciting, yet also chock-full of . . . exquisitely reasoned harangues against society’s ills.”

This Modern Library Paperback Classic is set from the Mark Twain Project edition, which is the approved text of the Center for Scholarly Editions of the Modern Language Association.

  • Published: 1 December 1997
  • ISBN: 9781101567968
  • Imprint: PEN US eBook Adult
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 224

Other books in the series

Emma
Persuasion
The Black Tulip
The Lady of the Camellias
On Sparta
Love
Annals
Military Dispatches

About the author

Mark Twain

Mark Twain's real name was Sam Clemens, and he was born in 1835 in a small town on the Mississippi, one of seven children. He smoked cigars at the age of eight, and aged nine he stowed away on a steamboat. He left school at 11 and worked at a grocery store, a bookstore, a blacksmith's and a newspaper, where he was allowed to write his own stories (not all of them true). He then worked on a steamboat, where he got the name 'Mark Twain' (from the call given by the boat's pilot when their boat is in safe waters). Eventually he turned to journalism again, travelled round the world, and began writing books which became very popular. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn are his most famous novels. He poured the money he earned from writing into new business ventures and crazy inventions, such as a clamp to stop babies throwing off their bed covers, a new boardgame, and a hand grenade full of extinguishing liquid to throw on a fire. With his shock of white hair and trademark white suit Mark Twain became the most famous American writer in the world. He died in 1910.

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