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A Tale of Two Cities

A Tale of Two Cities Mass market paperback - 1997

by Charles Dickens

  • Used
  • Good
  • Paperback

Description

Penguin Publishing Group, 1997. Mass Market Paperback. Good. Disclaimer:A copy that has been read, but remains in clean condition. All pages are intact, and the cover is intact. The spine may show signs of wear. Pages can include limited notes and highlighting, and the copy can include previous owner inscriptions. At ThriftBooks, our motto is: Read More, Spend Less.Dust jacket quality is not guaranteed.
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Details

  • Title A Tale of Two Cities
  • Author Charles Dickens
  • Binding Mass Market Paperback
  • Edition [ Edition: Repri
  • Condition Used - Good
  • Pages 371
  • Volumes 1
  • Language ENG
  • Publisher Penguin Publishing Group, New York, New York, U.S.A
  • Date 1997
  • Bookseller's Inventory # G0451526562I3N00
  • ISBN 9780451526564 / 0451526562
  • Weight 0.39 lbs (0.18 kg)
  • Dimensions 6.88 x 4.26 x 1.14 in (17.48 x 10.82 x 2.90 cm)
  • Reading level 710
  • Library of Congress subjects Historical fiction, War stories
  • Dewey Decimal Code FIC

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About this book

Written by Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities is a historical novel that follows Manette, a French doctor imprisoned for 18 long years in Paris’s Bastille. Following his release, he goes to live in London with his daughter Lucie, who had never met him and believed him to be dead. Set in London and Paris before and during the French Revolution and Reign of Terror, A Tale of Two Cities is a fictitious story that falls both into the historical and adventure genres. The famous book is one of the bestselling novels of all time, both for the atmosphere that Dickens’ creates and the tension he weaves. Full of love and brutality, A Tale of Two Cities exposes the highs and lows of humanity. 

Summary

150TH ANNIVERSARY EDITIONWith dramatic eloquence, this story of the French Revolution brings to life a time of terror and treason, and a starving people rising in frenzy and hate to overthrow a corrupt and decadent regime.

From the publisher

Charles Dickens was born on February 7, 1812, in Landport, Portsea, England. He died in Kent on June 9, 1870. The second of eight children of a family continually plagued by debt, the young Dickens came to know not only hunger and privation,but also the horror of the infamous debtors’ prison and the evils of child labor. A turn of fortune in the shape of a legacy brought release from the nightmare of prison and “slave” factories and afforded Dickens the opportunity of two years’ formal schooling at Wellington House Academy. He worked as an attorney’s clerk and newspaper reporter until his Sketches by Boz (1836) and The Pickwick Papers (1837) brought him the amazing and instant success that was to be his for the remainder of his life. In later years, the pressure of serial writing, editorial duties, lectures, and social commitments led to his separation from Catherine Hogarth after twenty-three years of marriage. It also hastened his death at the age of fifty-eight, when he was characteristically engaged in a multitude of work.

First line

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, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way-in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

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.

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