A Tale of Two Cities
Publisher: Book-of-the-Month Club
Published: 1998
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 337
Description: A Tale of Two Cities (1859) is probably the most memorable book Dickens ever wrote, from its unforgettable beginning ("It was the best of times, it was the worst of times .. .") to Sydney Carton's final soliloquy ("It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done . . ."). The relationship among the main characters—the dissolute lawyer Carton; his near- double, the émigré aristocrat Charles Darnay; and Lucy Manette, the woman they both cherish—is set into motion by the irresistible force of the French Revolution, symbolized by the demonic figure of Madame Defarge, knitting at the side of the Guillotine as the heads fall. Dickens drew much of the historical background of his story from Thomas Carlyle's classic history The French Revolution, published two decades earlier, but the driving force of the narrative owes as much to his love of melo- drama. The novel's motif of twinning—from the book's very title and opening words to its dual heroes and even the pairing of subordinate charac- ters, like Lucy's servant Miss Pross and Madame Defarge—along with the recurring allusions to res- urrection, as in Dr. Manette's being "recalled to life" from the Bastille and Jerry Cruncher's noctur- nal activities in graveyards, reinforce the work's unity and its irresistible momentum, making this novel, the only one with an historical background Dickens ever wrote, as vividly readable today as when it was written.