Set in sixteenth-century England, Mark Twain's classic "tale for young people of all ages" features two identical-looking boys-a prince and a pauper-who trade clothes and step into each other's lives. While the urchin, Tom Canty, discovers luxury and power, Prince Edward, dressed in rags, roams his kingdom and experiences the cruelties inflicted on the poor by the Tudor monarchy. As Christopher Paul Curtis observes in his Introduction, The Prince and the Pauper is "funny, adventurous, and exciting, yet also chock-full of . . . exquisitely reasoned harangues against society's ills."