The plot concerns the accession of nine-year-old Edward VI of England in 1547 and his interactions with look-alike Tom Canty, a London pauper who lives with his abusive, alcoholic father.

Tom Canty, the youngest child of a very poor family living in Offal Court, located in London, England, has been abused by his father and grandmother but is encouraged by the local priest, who taught him to read and write.

Edward's father, King Henry VIII, his fellow nobles, and the palace staff think the prince has an illness that has caused memory loss and fear he will go mad.

There, he is subjected to the brutality of Tom's alcoholic father, from whom he manages to escape, and meets Miles Hendon, a soldier and nobleman returning from war.

He realizes that the accused are convicted on flimsy evidence and branded or hanged for petty offenses, and he vows to reign with mercy when he regains his rightful place.

When Edward declares to a gang of thieves that he is the king and will put an end to unjust laws, they assume he is insane and hold a mock coronation.

The nobles are shocked at their resemblance but refuse to believe that Edward is the rightful king wearing Tom's clothes until he produces the Great Seal of England that he hid before leaving the palace.

Twain wrote of the book, "My idea is to afford a realizing sense of the exceeding severity of the laws of that day by inflicting some of their penalties upon the King himself and allowing him a chance to see the rest of them applied to others..."[2] Having returned from a second European tour—which formed the basis of A Tramp Abroad (1880)—Twain read extensively about English and French history.

The "whipping-boy story", originally meant as a chapter to be part of The Prince and the Pauper, was published in the Hartford Bazar Budget of July 4, 1880, before Twain deleted it from the novel at the suggestion of William Dean Howells.[why?]

Ultimately, The Prince and the Pauper was published by subscription by James R. Osgood of Boston, with illustrations by Frank Thayer Merrill, John Harley and Ludvig Sandöe Ipsen.

[6] A studio-cast musical adaptation with book/lyrics by Verna Tomasson and music by George Fischoff was recorded in 1963 on London Records (AM 98001/AMS 98001), with Joan Shepard as Tom Canty, Carol Blodgett as Prince Edward, John Davidson as Miles Hendon, Flora Elkins as Lady Anne, Joe Bousard as John Canty and Robert McHaffey.

English playwright Jemma Kennedy adapted the story into a musical drama, which was performed at the Unicorn Theatre in London between 2012 and 2013, directed by Selina Cartmell, and starred twins Danielle and Nichole Bird as the Prince and the Pauper and Jake Harders as Miles Hendon.

The 1937 version by Warner Bros. was its biggest hit for the year and starred Errol Flynn (as Hendon), Claude Raines, Alan Hale, and twins Billy and Bobby Mauch (as Tom Canty and Edward Tudor, respectively).

A 1977 film version of the story, starring Oliver Reed as Miles Hendon, Rex Harrison as the Duke of Norfolk, Mark Lester as Edward/Tom, Ernest Borgnine as John Canty, Charlton Heston as Henry VIII, and Raquel Welch and directed by Richard Fleischer, was released in the UK as The Prince and the Pauper and in the US as Crossed Swords.

It Takes Two, starring twins Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, is another loose adaptation of this story, in which two look-alike girls, one the wealthy daughter of a wireless service tycoon and the other an orphan, switch places in order to experience each other's lives.

The 1996 Bollywood film Tere Mere Sapne is loosely based upon this story, in which two boys born on exactly the same date switch places to experience the other's life while learning valuable lessons along the way.

Both Prince Edward and Tom Canty are played by Sean Scully, using the split-screen technique that Disney had used in The Parent Trap (1961) with Hayley Mills.

The Josie and the Pussycats episode "Swap Plot Flop" has Valerie agreeing to pose as a kidnapped princess who looks just like her, only for the plan to backfire.

The BBC TV comedy series Blackadder the Third has an episode, "Duel and Duality", in which the Prince Regent believes that the Duke of Wellington is after him.

The BBC produced a six-part dramatization of the story in 1996, adapted by Julian Fellowes, starring James Purefoy, with Keith Michell reprising his role of Henry VIII.

In 2017 Hallmark Channel released the movie Switched at Christmas, starring Candace Cameron Bure playing both twin sisters Kate Lockhart and Chris Dixon who swap after comparing their lifes.

In The Princess Switch (a Netflix romantic Christmas film released in November 2018 starring Vanessa Hudgens), Margaret, the Duchess of Montenaro, changes places with baker Stacy, whom she accidentally meets.

In 1996, C&E, a Taiwanese software company, released an RPG video game for Sega Genesis entitled 新乞丐王子/Xīn qǐgài wángzǐ ("New Beggar Prince").