Publisher Description
One of the more famous stories in children' s literature, The Prince and the Pauper has become an adult classic as well. Twain' s tall tale about a bedraggled street urchin who becomes king for a day, and his twin, the pampered Prince of Wales left to fend for himself among his seedier subjects, showcases the author' s satirical wit and his acute sense of political irony. The scenes of a young Tom Cantry, wearing the trappings of a prince, but possessing the heart of a beggar, stir both the imagination and the heart. Hearing this familiar story read by Recorded Books' Norman Dietz is a delightful experience that will reintroduce the seasoned reader to our nation' s most treasured storyteller, Mark Twain.
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About Mark Twain
Mark Twain, pseudonym of Samuel L. Clemens (1835–1910), was born in Florida, Missouri, and grew up in Hannibal on the west bank of the Mississippi River. He attended school briefly and then at age thirteen became a full-time apprentice to a local printer. When his older brother Orion established the Hannibal Journal, Samuel became a compositor for that paper and then, for a time, an itinerant printer. With a commission to write comic travel letters, he traveled down the Mississippi. Smitten with the riverboat life, he signed on as an apprentice to a steamboat pilot. After 1859, he became a licensed pilot, but two years later the Civil War put an end to the steam-boat traffic.
In 1861, he and his brother traveled to the Nevada Territory where Samuel became a writer for the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, and there, on February 3, 1863, he signed a humorous account with the pseudonym Mark Twain. The name was a river man’s term for water “two fathoms deep” and thus just barely safe for navigation.
In 1870 Twain married and moved with his wife to Hartford, Connecticut. He became a highly successful lecturer in the United States and England, and he continued to write.
About Norman Dietz
Norman Dietz is a writer, voice-over artist, and audiobook narrator. He has won numerous Earphones Awards and was named one of the fifty “Best Voices of the Century” by AudioFile magazine. He and his late wife, Sandra, transformed an abandoned ice-cream parlor into a playhouse, which served “the world’s best hot fudge sundaes” before and after performances. The founder of Theatre in the Works, he lives in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.