"What am I writing? A historical tale of 300 years ago, simply for the love of it." Mark Twain's "tale" became his first historical novel, The Prince and the Pauper, published in 1881. Intricately plotted, it was intended to have the feel of history even though it was only the stuff of legend. In sixteenth-century England, young Prince Edward (son of Henry VIII) and Tom Canty, a pauper boy who looks exactly like him, are suddenly forced to change places. The prince endures "rags & hardships" while the pauper suffers the "horrible miseries of princedom." Mark Twain called his book a "tale for young people of all ages," and it has become a classic of American literature.

The first edition in 1881 was fully illustrated by Frank Merrill, John Harley, and L. S. Ipsen. The boys in these illustrations, Mark Twain said, "look and dress exactly as I used to see them cast in my mind. . . . It is a vast pleasure to see them cast in the flesh, so to speak." This Mark Twain Library edition exactly reproduces the text of the California scholarly edition, including all of the 192 illustrations that so pleased the author.

Illustrations
Foreward

The Prince and the Pauper

Map of London
References
Explanatory Notes
Note on the Text

"The Mark Twain Library is one of the glories of the University of California Press."—Los Angeles Times [Jonathan Kirsch, 11 September 1983]

"Handsome, readable and full of surprises . . . the American classics that come to us from the Mark Twain Library are simply superb."—Los Angeles Times [Jonathan Kirsch, 11 September 1983]

"The Mark Twain Project of the University of California Press is reuniting Samuel Clemens’s texts with the essential illustrations he commissioned for them, and the results are splendid: may the Twain never again be sundered!" Vanity Fair [Cathleen Medwick, vol. 46 (December 1983): 16]

"Each additional volume reaffirms our faith and celebration in this splendid series." Nineteenth-Century Fiction [vol. 39 (June 1984): 120-21]

"Any academic who assigns another text rather than one of the . . . volumes now available in the Mark Twain Library owes the profession an apology if it can be found." American Literature [vol. 56 (October 1984): 454] [the elided word is "five"—the review covered the five in print in Oct. 1984: 1. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; 2. No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger; 3. Tom Sawyer Abroad and Tom Sawyer, Detective; 4. The Prince and the Pauper; 5. A Connecticut Yankee.]

"One of the great scholarly enterprises of the century. . . . If you want to enjoy, and to understand fully, the genius of Mark Twain, the California editions are the only texts to have." London Telegraph [Michael Shelden]

"Unquestionably the best book he has ever written."'—Susy Clemens, aged thirteen

Mark Twain Project Online