The Prince and the Pauper (Modern Library Classics) - Softcover

Mark Twain; Introduction By Christopher Paul Curtis

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0375761128 ISBN 13: 9780375761126

Publisher: Modern Library Inc, 2002

Synopsis

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.Set in Renaissance England, The Prince and the Pauper tells the story of Tom Canty, a ragged pauper, and young Edward VI, only son of Henry VIII, who miraculously look exactly alike. Almost by accident, the boys exchange places a few days before Henry's death and Edward's coronation, leaving Tom to the role of future king and Edward to the mercy of the beggars' underworld of London. A rousing tale of mistaken identity, The Prince and the Pauper reveals a side of Mark Twain seldom seen.

About this title

Review:

"Twain was . . . enough of a genius to build his morality into his books, with humor and wit and--in the case of The Prince and the Pauper--wonderful plotting." --E. L. Doctorow

About the Author:

Mark Twain, born Samuel Langhorne Clemens in 1835, led one of the most exciting of literary lives. Raised in the river town of Hannibal, Missouri, Twain had to leave school at age 12 and was successively a journeyman printer, a steamboat pilot, a halfhearted Confederate soldier, and a prospector, miner, and reporter in the western territories. His experiences furnished him with a wide knowledge of humanity, as well as with the perfect grasp of local customs and speech which manifests itself in his writing. With the publication in 1865 of The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, Twain gained national attention as a frontier humorist, and the bestselling Innocents Abroad solidified his fame. But it wasn't until Life on the Mississippi (1883), and finally, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), that he was recognized by the literary establishment as one of the greatest writers America would ever produce. Toward the end of his life, plagued by personal tragedy and financial failure, Twain grew more and more pessimistic an outlook not alleviated by his natural skepticism and sarcasm. Though his fame continued to widen Yale & Oxford awarded him honorary degrees Twain spent his last years in gloom and exasperation, writing fables about the damned human race.

About this edition

• Publisher: Modern Library Inc
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0375761128
• ISBN 13: 9780375761126
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 240