A Tale of Two Cities Paperback - 1990

About this book

Summary

From the jacket flap

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness...."
The most famous and possibly the most popular of Dickens's novels, "A Tale of Two Cities shows a master of dramatic narrative extracting gold from the ore of history. If the bloody tableau of the French Revolution were not in itself sufficient for a dozen novels, Dickens added to it a professional resurrectionist, an authentic ogress, and an antihero as convincingly flawed as any in modern literature. Here, too, are all of Dickens's recurring themes -- imprisonment, injustice, and cataclysmic violence, resurrection and the renunciation that makes renewal possible.

First Edition Identification

A Tale of Two Cities was first published in 31 weekly installments in a journal called All the Year Round between April and November of 1859, and published in a book form in the same year. The publisher of the first book edition was Chapman and Hall, based in London. Original illustrations were done by H. K. Browne on 16 plates inserted into the book. The first edition is a hardcover, octavo book with maroon cloth covers. However, some first editions have had the binding refurbished. A key way to identify first editions of A Tale of Two Cities is that page 213 is misnumbered as “113.” Additionally, affectionately is misspelled as “affetcionately” on line 12, page 134. Finally, the signature “b” is present on the list of plate illustrations.

Media reviews

“[A Tale of Two Cities] has the best of Dickens and the worst of Dickens: a dark, driven opening, and a celestial but melodramatic ending; a terrifyingly demonic villainess and (even by Dickens’ standards) an impossibly angelic heroine. Though its version of the French Revolution is brutally simplified, its engagement with the immense moral themes of rebirth and terror, justice, and sacrifice gets right to the heart of the matter . . . For every reader in the past hundred and forty years and for hundreds to come, it is an unforgettable ride.” –from the Introduction by Simon Schama