Prince and the Pauper (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) Read Online Free

(Paine, A. B. Mark Twain: A Biography, Vol. I, New York: Harper & Brothers, 1912, p. 73.) It is not difficult to imagine that Twain could take his own experiences of poverty and cruelty and amplify them into the truly ghastly conditions of Tom Canty’s early life.
    As Twain’s reputation grew he was transformed from lowly newspaper reporter into celebrated author. This celebrity allowed him to hobnob with the Great and Good (including the Russian czar, the German kaiser, and the emperor of Austria-Hungary) and to develop a keen eye for the doings of the upper classes. The courts of the nineteenth century were at least as grand, perhaps even more so, than those of Tudor England. Mark Twain was a proud American and a republican, and he scoffed at the very notion of aristocracy, as well as at a type of American traveler of a certain class who fawned over the titled and highborn. However, he did admit: “We are all like—on the inside ... we dearly like to be noticed by a duke.... When a returned American is playing the earls he has met I can look on silent and unexcited and never offer to call his hand, although I have three kings and a pair of emperors up my sleeve.” (Camfield, p. 376.) These crowned heads do more than just pump up an awestruck American Grand Tourist: Twain’s travels in the courts, palaces, and lavish country houses of Europe must have provided grist for his mill and found their way into the pages of The Prince and the Pauper.
    Ultimately, of course, the plot and the action of the novel spring from Twain’s own fabulous imagination. It is apparent in every line of the book how much he enjoyed writing it, and in later years he would rank it alongside Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer —even if others would not. Perhaps the praise Twain valued most highly came from his favorite daughter, Susie. She said, emphatically, that The Prince and the Pauper was “Unquestionably the best book he has ever written.”
     
    Robert Tine is the author of six novels, including State of Grace and Black Market. He has written for a variety of periodicals and magazines—from the New York Times to Newsweek. He was educated at various schools in six countries (the Bahamas, Wales, South Africa, Swaziland, and Argentina) and at Columbia University in New York. He lives in New York City.

TO
THOSE GOOD-MANNERED AND AGREEABLE CHILDREN,
SUSIE AND CLARA CLEMENS,
this book
IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED
BY THEIR FATHER.

THE quality of mercy ...
is twice bless’d;
It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes;
’Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes
The thronéd monarch better than his crown.
    Merchant of Venice

PREFACE
    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 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.
    HUGH LATIMER, Bishop of Worcester, to LORD CROMWELL, on the birth of the PRINCE OF WALES ( afterward EDWARD VI.)
    FROM THE NATIONAL MANUSCRIPTS PRESERVED BY THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT

    HUGH LATIMER, Bishop of Worcester, to LORD CROMWELL, on the birth of the PRINCE OF WALES (afterward EDWARD VI.)
    FROM THE NATIONAL MANUSCRIPTS PRESERVED BY THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT
     
     
    Ryght honorable, Salutem in Christo Jesu, and Syr here ys no lesse joynge and rejossynge in thes partees for the byrth of our prynce, hoom we hungurde for so longe, then ther was (I trow), inter vicinos att the byrth of S. I. Baptyste, as thys berer, Master Erance, can telle you. Gode gyffe us alle grace, to yelde dew thankes to our Lorde Gode, Gode of Inglonde, for verely