A Tale of Two Cities

Front Cover
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, Jul 14, 1990 - Fiction - 400 pages
Set against the backdrop of the French Revolution, A Tale of Two Cities is one of Charles Dickens’s most popular and dramatic stories.

It begins on a muddy English road in an atmosphere charged with mystery and it ends in the Paris of the Revolution with one of the most famous acts of self-sacrifice in literature. In between lies one of Dickens’s most exciting books—a historical novel that, generation after generation, has given readers access to the profound human dramas that lie behind cataclysmic social and political events. Famous for its vivid characters, including the courageous French nobleman Charles Darnay, the vengeful revolutionary Madame Defarge, and cynical Englishman Sydney Carton, who redeems his ill-spent life in a climactic moment at the guillotine (“It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done”), the novel is also a powerful study of crowd psychology and the dark emotions aroused by the Revolution, illuminated by Dickens’s lively comedy.

With an Introduction by Simon Schama
 

Contents

Preface
3
The Period
7
The Mail BOOK THE FIRST
10
Recalled to Life
14
The Night Shadows
15
The Preparation
20
The Wineshop
31
The Shoemaker
42
The Fellow of No Delicacy
152
The Honest Tradesman
156
Knitting
167
Still Knitting
178
One Night
189
Nine Days
194
An Opinion
200
A Plea
208

BOOK
55
Five Years Later
57
SECOND
60
A Sight
63
A Disappointment 4 Congratulatory 5 The Jackal ix 3 IS 20 31 72 37 IO 42 57 63
70
Hundreds of People 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 3 236
95
Monseigneur in Town
108
Monseigneur in the Country
116
The Gorgons Head
122
Two Promises
133
A Companion Picture
141
The Fellow of Delicacy
145
Echoing Footsteps
212
The Sea Still Rises
223
Fire Rises
229
Drawn to the Loadstone Rock
236
BOOK THE THIRD The Track of a Storm
249
In Secret
251
The Grindstone
262
The Shadow
269
Fiftytwo
350
The Knitting Done
362
The Footsteps Die Out for Ever
374
Copyright

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About the author (1990)

Charles Dickens (1812-1870) was born in Portsmouth, England, and spent most of his life in London. When he was twelve, his father was sent to debtor’s prison and he was forced to work in a boot polish factory, an experience that marked him for life. He became a passionate advocate of social reform and the most popular writer of the Victorian era.

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