I spent a long time with this book, which I picked up in August after visiting the Nevada mining town where Samuel Clemens first used his pen name Mark Twain in 1863 as a journalist at the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise.
Not having read any Twain since high school (The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County"), I was curious how I would find the author's work, writing style, and voice as a well-read adult.
I didn't know Twain had written The Prince and Pauper, and the premise, a rich, powerful boy and an impoverished, powerless boy exchange experiences, interested me. Also, the theme felt timely to today's political discussions of income inequality and class warfare — and so I began.
And slowly, slowly continued. On a six-hour flight to the East Coast, I never read a word of it.
However, arriving in Greenwich Village, New York City in September I saw another plaque bearing Mark Twain's name. He lived in the village in the early 1900s. I was inspired to persist with The Prince and the Pauper (as I am dogged and undaunted by slow novels).
I enjoyed the ending; so there was some payoff.
The volume I read included some reviews of the book written in 1881 shortly after it was published. Some said it was not worthy of Mark Twain's name and better described as a work by Samuel Clemens — as the tone so differs from the author's humorous works. Others said it proved Twain's serious, literary talent.
As a writer, I can see why Twain himself would be fascinated with the work (He wrote it between Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn and worked on it he said, "with an interest that amounted to intemperance," according to the introduction by Robert Tine). I imagine the author was engaged by his premise and interested in his historical research of Tudor England.
Writers, read this for: a good example of the "sagging middle" problem, the beginning and ending of the book are good. It lags, lacking tension and drive in the middle.
Pairs well with: Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889), perhaps? I'd be interested to give his a read, when I am ready to wade into another Twain.
Quotes:
"If thou do but touch him, thou animated offal, I will spit thee like a goose!"
"hunger is pride's master"
"It does us all good to unbend sometimes."
"He felt much as a man might who had danced blithely out to enjoy a rainbow, and got struck by lightening."
"Hard conditions; he would take the stripes— a king might do that but a king could not beg."
"What dost thou know of suffering and oppression? I and my people know, but not thou."
"The world is made wrong, kings should go to school to their own laws at times, and so learn mercy."
Of note:
Not having read any Twain since high school (The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County"), I was curious how I would find the author's work, writing style, and voice as a well-read adult.I didn't know Twain had written The Prince and Pauper, and the premise, a rich, powerful boy and an impoverished, powerless boy exchange experiences, interested me. Also, the theme felt timely to today's political discussions of income inequality and class warfare — and so I began.
And slowly, slowly continued. On a six-hour flight to the East Coast, I never read a word of it.
However, arriving in Greenwich Village, New York City in September I saw another plaque bearing Mark Twain's name. He lived in the village in the early 1900s. I was inspired to persist with The Prince and the Pauper (as I am dogged and undaunted by slow novels).
I enjoyed the ending; so there was some payoff.
As a writer, I can see why Twain himself would be fascinated with the work (He wrote it between Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn and worked on it he said, "with an interest that amounted to intemperance," according to the introduction by Robert Tine). I imagine the author was engaged by his premise and interested in his historical research of Tudor England.
Writers, read this for: a good example of the "sagging middle" problem, the beginning and ending of the book are good. It lags, lacking tension and drive in the middle.
Pairs well with: Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889), perhaps? I'd be interested to give his a read, when I am ready to wade into another Twain.
Quotes:
"If thou do but touch him, thou animated offal, I will spit thee like a goose!"
"hunger is pride's master"
"It does us all good to unbend sometimes."
"He felt much as a man might who had danced blithely out to enjoy a rainbow, and got struck by lightening."
"Hard conditions; he would take the stripes— a king might do that but a king could not beg."
"What dost thou know of suffering and oppression? I and my people know, but not thou."
"The world is made wrong, kings should go to school to their own laws at times, and so learn mercy."
Of note:
- Little in the way of women characters.
- Interesting animal scene: the king, being ill-treated as a commoner, takes refuge in a barn and gains comfort and warmth from a calf...within the context of the book it shows the relationship between the treatment of animal and human outcasts i.e. the poor and powerless.
"And he had been so buffeted, so rudely entreated by his own kind, that it was a real comfort to him to feel that he was at last in the society of a fellow-creature that had at least a soft heart and a gentle spirit, whatever loftier attributes might be lacking. So he resolved to waive rank and make friends with the calf."
Mark Twain was an anti-vivisectionist on the grounds that it was wrong to cause animals pain. More at "Mark Twain for Animal Welfare," at The Human Experience | Inside the Humanities at Stanford University.
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