The Prince and the Pauper

by Mark Twain

First published 1881

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London, January 1547. Tom Canty, a poor boy from Offal Court, meets Edward Tudor, Prince of Wales, at Westminster and discovers that they look almost identical. When they exchange clothes, palace guards drive Edward into the streets as a beggar, while Tom is mistaken for Henry VIII’s heir and trapped inside the machinery of the Tudor court.

Edward experiences hunger, punishment and the severe criminal laws imposed on ordinary people, while Tom learns how ceremony and privilege isolate a prince from the country he may rule. Henry VIII’s death turns the mistake into a succession crisis, and both boys must reach Edward’s coronation before Tom is permanently installed as king. Twain uses the exchange to contrast dynastic power with poverty and to imagine how suffering might shape Edward VI’s sense of justice.