Before You Begin

Before you begin.

In a London of crooked streets and timbered houses, a beggar boy named Tom Canty dreams of princes while he goes hungry in Offal Court. On the same day, behind the gilded bars of Westminster, a real prince looks out at the crowd with equal longing for a different life. When chance brings the two boys face to face, they discover they share the same hair, the same eyes, the same face and stature — and in a moment of innocent play they trade clothes, and with them, their whole worlds.

Mark Twain — the American storyteller best known for the sunlit boyhood of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn — here turns his eye on Tudor England and the last days of Henry VIII. Beneath the costume drama beats his lifelong subject: the gulf between the powerful and the poor, and the cruelty that hides inside law and custom. The pauper who is mistaken for a king learns how heavy a crown can be; the prince cast out among thieves, tramps, and hanging-judges learns what his realm truly does to its weakest subjects.

More than a century on, the book endures because its central trick is irresistible and its moral is sharp: it asks whether a man is made by his blood or by his deeds, and it answers with both heartbreak and mischief. By turns a fairy tale, a satire, and a rousing adventure, it has been read and loved by every generation since.

What follows is an illustrated companion to that world — its people, its places, and its turning points. Step through the gate, and decide for yourself which boy was truly born to rule.