A Tale of Two Cities (1905)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: INTRODUCTION By EDWIN PERCY WHIFFLE " A Tale of Two Cities " is one of the most thrilling narratives in the whole range of the literature of fiction. Considered apart from all the other works of Dickens, it would entitle him to a very high rank among romancers. The provoking pauses in the progress of his other stories, made for the purpose of introducing new characters, are not observable in this, which seems to be spurred and driven on by some overmastering power above and back of the author, making him " Like one, that on a lonesome road Doth walk in fear and dread, And having once turned round, walks on, And turns no more his head; Because he knows a frightful fiend Doth close behind him tread." The stimulant which kindled Dickens's imagination was Car- lyle's wonderful prose epic, "The French Revolution," which so captivated him that he re-read it a score of times with ever new delight. After he had decided to write the tale, Carlyle furnished him with many of the books he had himself used in preparing his work, and which aided Dickens in gaining a vivid conception of the condition of France, both while the Revolution was impending and after it had rushed into its worst excesses. The idea of the story was working vaguely in his mind when he was specially disturbed by his domestic troubles; it grew into shape gradually; and, after his quarrel with the publishers of " Household Words " had impelled him to establish the weekly periodical of "All the Year Round," he inaugurated his new enterprise by publishing, on April 30, 1859, the opening portions of "A Tale of Two Cities." The story at once carried the circulation of the weekly up to anaverage sale varying between thirty and forty thousand copies. Before venturing on the publication, he had the usual corre...