A Tale of Two Cities (Penguin Classics)
Charles Dickens's classic historical novel of the French Revolution
A Tale of Two Cities portrays a world on fire, split between Paris and London during the brutal and bloody events of the French Revolution. After eighteen years as a political prisoner in the Bastille the aging Dr Manette is finally released and reunited with his daughter in England. There, two very different men, Charles Darnay, an exiled French aristocrat, and Sydney Carton, a disreputable but brilliant English lawyer, become enmeshed through their love for Lucie Manette. From the tranquil lanes of London, they are all drawn against their will to the vengeful, bloodstained streets of Paris at the height of the Reign of Terror and soon fall under the lethal shadow of La Guillotine.
This edition uses the text as it appeared in its first serial publication in 1859 to convey the full scope of Dickens's vision, and includes the original illustrations by H.K. Browne ('Phiz'). Richard Maxwell's introduction discusses the intricate interweaving of epic drama with personal tragedy.
Penguin Classics is the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world, representing a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
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Community Reviews
Re-read.
I think this is my favorite of the Dickens novel's I've read. It is at least as good as Great Expectations. I admit some sympathy due to its setting (A Place of Greater Safety is also one of my favorites, again because of the French Revolution). Dickens does a great job of both incorporating large pieces of the relevant historical events - the September massacres, the first and second terror, the storming of the Bastille, the death of Louis XVI - and the feeling around them AND weaving his characters' stories through those events.
He also does a great job, admittedly more relevant to his contemporary audience, of contrasting London and Paris in a way that advances his notion that circumstances are heavily influencing behavior, that reform is the only alternative to the violence of revolution.
The only part of the novel that I lose interest in comes in the middle - basically when all the marriage proposals happen. Luckily one of those is quite hilarious, but Lucie is probably one of his worst female characters. She basically faints a lot. That's it. She has no personality other than a seeming medical condition like low blood pressure or hypoglycemia. I even googled whether or not Victorian women fainted more. They didn't. It's just a novelistic convention - part of reproducing the era's gender expectations. Aside from possibly hurting my eyes from rolling them so much, it is really just a lost opportunity and a bit of plot hole if you ask yourself why 3 different guys would be so attracted to her, especially since she has no property to speak of as a ward of the bank.
That's another thing actually - she's a ward of a bank! That'd be like Chase or Wells Fargo adopting kids. In practice it would just be them paying the bills for a nanny, but still. Just hilarious to think about.
Any way, the sentimentalism of Victorian novels and the endless insistence on marriage plots will always be their weak spots. It just gets repetitive and boring. I am certainly glad we've moved on to more interesting plots and female characters.
All those negatives aside, which are really just features of the era/genre to a degree, the overall novel, the background, the courtroom dramas, the suspense of the final chapters - all top notch stuff.
Oh and I read the Penguin version this time and the footnotes called my attention to a very subtle pattern of references to Ovid's metamorphoses, or rather similar metamorphoses to what happen in Ovid, but translated from the figurative. Have to say I thought it was a reach at first but as it kept popping up I was pretty impressed.
Highly recommend.
I think this is my favorite of the Dickens novel's I've read. It is at least as good as Great Expectations. I admit some sympathy due to its setting (A Place of Greater Safety is also one of my favorites, again because of the French Revolution). Dickens does a great job of both incorporating large pieces of the relevant historical events - the September massacres, the first and second terror, the storming of the Bastille, the death of Louis XVI - and the feeling around them AND weaving his characters' stories through those events.
He also does a great job, admittedly more relevant to his contemporary audience, of contrasting London and Paris in a way that advances his notion that circumstances are heavily influencing behavior, that reform is the only alternative to the violence of revolution.
The only part of the novel that I lose interest in comes in the middle - basically when all the marriage proposals happen. Luckily one of those is quite hilarious, but Lucie is probably one of his worst female characters. She basically faints a lot. That's it. She has no personality other than a seeming medical condition like low blood pressure or hypoglycemia. I even googled whether or not Victorian women fainted more. They didn't. It's just a novelistic convention - part of reproducing the era's gender expectations. Aside from possibly hurting my eyes from rolling them so much, it is really just a lost opportunity and a bit of plot hole if you ask yourself why 3 different guys would be so attracted to her, especially since she has no property to speak of as a ward of the bank.
That's another thing actually - she's a ward of a bank! That'd be like Chase or Wells Fargo adopting kids. In practice it would just be them paying the bills for a nanny, but still. Just hilarious to think about.
Any way, the sentimentalism of Victorian novels and the endless insistence on marriage plots will always be their weak spots. It just gets repetitive and boring. I am certainly glad we've moved on to more interesting plots and female characters.
All those negatives aside, which are really just features of the era/genre to a degree, the overall novel, the background, the courtroom dramas, the suspense of the final chapters - all top notch stuff.
Oh and I read the Penguin version this time and the footnotes called my attention to a very subtle pattern of references to Ovid's metamorphoses, or rather similar metamorphoses to what happen in Ovid, but translated from the figurative. Have to say I thought it was a reach at first but as it kept popping up I was pretty impressed.
Highly recommend.
I missed all of the humor when i read this originally i was very young! Im man enough to admit ive only read it once since and it was a skim. I think i can claim having read it tho. I will reread. My list is too long. Anyway first novel i ever read and it made me fall in love with world building and a long ass book
Well, sometimes this was a quick read and flowed, then got snagged up on some barrier that I had to trudge through. But the last quarter fell like a waterfall to it's destination. I'm so glad I revisited this and learned again about the time period and the storming of the Bastille. Distilled to it's essence this book is about the power of love.
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