The Prince and the Pauper

by Mark Twain

Category: Fiction

Status: Available

Source: Public Domain — Project Gutenberg

About This Book

"The Prince and the Pauper" by Mark Twain is a novel first published in 1881. Two identical boys—Prince Edward Tudor and pauper Tom Canty—meet by chance and swap clothes, only to find themselves trapped in each other's lives. As Edward experiences the brutal reality of poverty and injustice firsthand, Tom struggles to maintain the royal charade. This tale of mistaken identity explores class inequality and the harsh English judicial system, while both boys discover what it truly means to walk in another's shoes. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

About the Author

American · 1835–1910

He was one of the most famous American writers. His book Huckleberry Finn is still read in schools around the world.

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Preview

Produced by David Widger. The earliest PG edition was prepared by Les Bowler

THE PRINCE AND THE PAUPER

by Mark Twain

The Great Seal

I will set down a tale as it was told to me by one who had it of his father, which latter had it of HIS father, this last having in like manner had it of HIS father--and so on, back and still back, three hundred years and more, the fathers transmitting it to the sons and so preserving it. It may be history, it may be only a legend, a tradition. It may have happened, it may not have happened: but it COULD have happened. It may be that the wise and the learned believed it in the old days; it may be that only the unlearned and the simple loved it and credited it.

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

THE GREAT SEAL (frontis

... (scroll to read more)

About This Edition

This edition of The Prince and the Pauper by Mark Twain is catalogued on Libreya under Fiction and runs approximately 69,065 words — about 345 minutes of reading at an average pace. It is sourced from Project Gutenberg, the world's oldest digital library of public domain literature, founded in 1971 by Michael Hart, and every text on Libreya has been verified to be free of copyright restrictions in the United States. You can view the original Project Gutenberg edition here.

On Libreya, the text has been carefully formatted for comfortable reading on any screen — with consistent chapter navigation, adjustable font sizes, and four reading themes: light, sepia, dark, and night mode. Your reading position is saved automatically when you sign in, so you can pick up exactly where you left off across any device. The original text has not been altered in any way; what you read here is the same work as it appeared in its original published form.

About Classic Fiction

Classic fiction represents the highest achievements of literary imagination. The novels in this genre have shaped how generations of readers understand human nature, society, and the fundamental questions of existence. Reading 19th and early 20th-century novels offers far more than historical interest: these stories explore love, ambition, morality, and identity with an insight that remains startlingly relevant today. Authors like Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Austen, Hardy, and Dickens wrote for readers much like us — people trying to make sense of a complicated world — and their observations on class, relationships, power, and conscience carry across centuries with barely diminished force. Classic fiction is also where the novel as an art form reached some of its greatest heights: innovative narrative structures, deeply realized characters, and prose styles that reward slow, attentive reading. These are not museum pieces. They are living works that continue to be discussed, adapted, and argued over because they capture something essential and enduring about human experience.