Two boys exchange their clothes and their lives in Mark Twain's
classic satiric comedy.
They are the same age. They look alike. In fact, there is but one
difference between them: Tom Canty is a child of the London slums;
Edward Tudor is heir to the throne of England. Just how insubstantial
this difference really is becomes clear when a chance encounter leads to
an exchange of roles...with the pauper caught up in the pomp and folly
of the royal court, and the prince wandering, horror-stricken, through
the lower depths of sixteenth-century English society.
Out of the theme of switched identities, Mark Twain has fashioned both a
scathing attack upon social hypocrisy and injustice and an irresistible
comedy imbued with the sense of high-spirited play that belongs to his
most creative period.
With an Afterword by Everett Emerson