A Tale of Two Cities (Barnes & Noble Signature Editions)

By Charles Dickens and Grace Moore

When millions suffer under iron-fisted oppression, when anger and resentment boil into bloody insurrection, when triumph leads to savage vengeance — does one individual life matter? In A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens interweaves the intensely personal dramas of Lucie Manette, Charles Darnay, and Sydney Carton with the terror and chaos of the French Revolution. The result is a powerful story of love, sacrifice, and redemption amid horrific violence and world-changing events.

     Lucie struggles desperately to restore the health of a father driven mad by years of unjust imprisonment. Darnay, a passionate young idealist, must overcome his family’s evil past. The cynical, alcoholic barrister, Carton, finally finds someone worthy of love and devotion—but will his affections be returned? When Darnay braves the Reign of Terror to save a faithful servant from the guillotine, Lucie and her father rush to protect him, and Carton’s newfound feelings of love are put to the ultimate test.

      Flavored with such unforgettable characters as the Marquis St. Evrémonde, who sings the  praises of repression after his coach has struck and killed a peasant child, and Madame Defarge, who attends calmly to her knitting as heads roll, A Tale of Two Cities is a novel of stark contrasts, bitter ironies, and, ultimately, great hope.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Barnes & Noble
• Release date: Nov 1, 2012
• ISBN: 9781435141278

Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens (1812–1870) gehört bis heute zu den beliebtesten Schriftstellern der Weltliteratur, in England ist er geradezu eine nationale Institution, und auch bei uns erfreuen sich seine Werke einer nicht nachlassenden Beliebtheit. Sein „Weihnachtslied in Prosa“ erscheint im deutschsprachigen Raum bis heute alljährlich in immer neuen Ausgaben und Adaptionen. Dickens’ lebensvoller Erzählstil, sein quirliger Humor, sein vehementer Humanismus und seine mitreißende Schaffensfreude brachten ihm den Beinamen „der Unnachahmliche“ ein.

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Introduction, Annotations, and Further Reading

© 2012 by Sterling Publishing Co., Inc.

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CONTENTS

THE LIFE AND TIMES OF CHARLES DICKENS

INTRODUCTION

PREFACE

BOOK I: RECALLED TO LIFE

BOOK II: THE GOLDEN THREAD

BOOK III: THE TRACK OF A STORM

AFTERWORD: TWO EARLIER WORKS OF INTEREST

ENDNOTES

BASED ON THE BOOK

FURTHER READING

THE LIFE AND TIMES OF CHARLES DICKENS

INTRODUCTION

ONE OF THE BEST KNOWN AND BEST LOVED OF CHARLES DICKENS’ NOVELS, A Tale of Two Cities (1859) is a romantic story of unrequited love, noble sacrifice and redemption set during the turbulent days of the French Revolution. Featuring one of the most complex and intriguing of Dickens’ heroes—Sydney Carton, the moody, decadent wastrel who transforms himself for the love of a good woman—the novel also marked an important turning point for Dickens as a writer. After having spent several years in a deep depression, partly because of events in his own life and partly because of a growing despondency over the lack of social reform on the part of the British government, Dickens moved away from the so-called dark novels of the 1850s. An important work of historical fiction and a reflection of a number of contemporary political concerns, A Tale of Two Cities displays Dickens’ growing creativity and ambition, confirming his position as one of the greatest Victorian novelists.

Charles Dickens was born in Portsmouth, England, in 1812. His father, John Dickens, worked as a pay clerk for the Royal Navy and was known as a generous, gregarious man. His financial affairs were somewhat precarious, however, and he struggled to manage money for almost all of his adult life, often finding himself in debt. In 1824 John Dickens was arrested and imprisoned in the Marshalsea Debtors’ Prison in London. While his mother and younger siblings followed John to the prison, twelve-year-old Charles was sent to work at Warren’s Blacking Factory, where he was employed to paste labels on jars of boot polish. This arrangement was particularly stinging, given that his sister Fanny was permitted to continue her studies at the Royal Academy of Music.

John Dickens was released from the Marshalsea in May 1824, but Charles was not immediately removed from the factory, and he continued to work there until his father argued with the owner some weeks later. Charles was then able to continue his education and, following a brief period at school, he went to work for a legal firm as a clerk. Although Dickens worked at Warren’s for only a few months, he was a sensitive young man and found the experience both degrading and terrifying. He never completely recovered from this temporary descent into the underworld of poverty, and even when he became an internationally renowned writer, he still worried about his finances. He also never forgave his mother, who was quite prepared to leave him working in the factory even when the family’s finances had stabilized. Deep though his trauma was, Dickens also appreciated that his time at Warren’s was formative, giving him both focus and determination. Writing in a now-lost autobiographical fragment that he bequeathed to his eventual biographer, John Forster, Dickens remarked, I know all these things have worked together to make me what I am.

Most famous as a love story, A Tale of Two Cities tells the story of the interconnected lives of characters in France and Britain. The novel begins with the dramatic recalling to life of Dr. Manette, a man who has been imprisoned because of his innocent involvement in a terrible crime committed by a powerful French aristocrat. Years later, when Dr. Manette has settled in England, he and his beautiful daughter, Lucie, are called as witnesses in the trial of the Frenchman Charles Darnay, who is accused of treachery. Darnay is eventually acquitted through the resourcefulness of Sydney Carton, who draws on his physical resemblance to Darnay to discredit a witness. Both men fall in love with Lucie, who chooses Charles as her husband. However, Sydney remains devoted to the young woman, who offers stability in Carton’s chaotic, wasted life. Gradually, we learn of a mystery surrounding Darnay’s identity, and he is drawn back to France to resolve some affairs. Darnay and his family then become caught up in the drama of the French Revolution, which throws them into the clutches of violent revolutionaries, including Monsieur Defarge and his evil wife, Thérèse. As the story unfolds, Dickens reveals a number of surprising interconnections between characters, showing a world of merciless violence in which people learn that they can never escape either the past or their destinies.

The novel was written at a personally difficult time for Dickens. After he had become infatuated with a young actress named Ellen Ternan, Dickens’ marriage broke down in 1857, and the following year he separated from his wife, Catherine. With the exception of Dickens’ eldest son, Charley, the other children remained with their father and were not permitted to see their mother. Dickens and Ellen Ternan had become friends when they appeared together in Wilkie Collins’ play The Frozen Deep in 1857, and at some stage, she became his mistress. Precise details of their relationship are not available, but critics, including Catherine Dickens’ biographer Lillian Nayder, have suggested that Dickens experienced what we would today term a midlife crisis in the late 1850s.¹ Certainly, as his marriage began to disintegrate, Dickens showed signs of a more general depression. This malaise reflected his annoyance that, in spite of his efforts to expose appalling living conditions and the abuse of power by the negligent ruling classes, nothing was actually changing. He grew increasingly angry with English society, satirizing what he saw as a national indolence in novels such as Little Dorrit (1855–57).

In many respects A Tale of Two Cities is an atypical Dickens novel. Most obviously, much of the action takes place in Paris rather than the London from which so many of his works drew inspiration. Dickens had long been fascinated by France, and the French, and in the 1850s he spent months at a time there. He became nearly fluent in the language, and he increasingly admired the way in which the nation had restructured itself after decades of revolutionary turbulence. He was living in France when the Crimean War broke out in 1854, and he was highly impressed by the organization of the French military—a direct contrast to the chaos of the British armed forces and those responsible for their administration. Dickens also undertook much more research for A Tale of Two Cities than for most of his other novels. He drew particularly on his friend Thomas Carlyle’s magnum opus, The French Revolution (1837), but in addition he spent a great deal of time reading historical works at the London Library. For the most part, the research that Dickens usually engaged in tended to involve close observation as he wandered the streets of London and absorbed the spectacle of metropolitan life, so this more scholarly attempt to accumulate contextual knowledge signaled another new departure for him.

The characters in this novel differ greatly from the comic figures of such early works as The Pickwick Papers (1836–37) and the psychologically complex protagonists of Bleak House (1852–53). For some readers, the characterization seems sketchier than usual and even the most important figures seem to lack depth. Far from being an artistic flaw, however, this was part of Dickens’ plan. As he wrote to Forster:

I set myself the little task of making a picturesque story, rising in every chapter with characters true to nature, but whom the story itself should express, more than they should express themselves, by dialogue. I mean, in other words, that I fancied a story of incident might be written, in place of the bestiality that is written under that pretence, pounding the characters out in its own mortar, and beating their interests out of them.²

For Dickens, then, character should take second place to a cataclysmic event such as a revolution. A Tale of Two Cities is a story of incident in which individual identities are subordinated to the broader, sweeping events of history. Indeed, the insignificance of character is best demonstrated by the proliferation of people adopting the pseudonym Jacques throughout the narrative. Personality ceases to be important as characters are swept up in the events of 1789. What is significant is their collective force as part of the revolutionary crowd, and when Sydney Carton languidly declares, There is a great crowd coming one day into our lives, he signals the relentless power of the masses.

Dickens emphasizes the inevitability of the insurrection by drawing on unstoppable natural imagery, including storms and floods. He also, though, shows the revolution’s unnatural qualities when the narrator imagines trees that are growing up so that they may become scaffolds on which to hang perceived enemies of the revolution. Furthermore, Dickens draws attention to the desperation of the French peasantry by figuring them as scarecrows. This uncanny imagery is a terrifying reminder of just how emaciated and hungry the revolutionaries were, as well as of how misery and deprivation have gradually robbed them of their humanity. As a middle-class radical, Dickens shows himself to be ambivalent in the face of the crowd. On the one hand, he is excited by the people’s commitment when they take to the streets, but on the other, he is terrified by the crowd’s changeable nature. He exemplifies this fear when Charles Darnay is reprieved from execution after his first trial and the spectators rapidly descend into chaos. Importantly, there is no distinction for him between the crowds in London and those in Paris, pointing to a desperate mob rule that transcends national boundaries.

Two of the novel’s lead characters, Charles Darnay and Lucie Manette, are, in contrast to the agitated crowd, slightly insipid, so much so that when Sydney Carton dismisses Lucie as a golden-haired doll, the reader is inclined to agree. The more successful and memorable figures in this work are those who are wicked in some way. Thus Sydney Carton’s self-destructive debauchery and his tragic unreturned love for Lucie make him significantly more engaging than the more conventional Darnay. The novel’s most memorable character, however, is the vibrant, frightening Madame Defarge, whose ferocity and violence make her the embodiment of the revolution’s destructive force. Terrifyingly vengeful, ruthless, and lacking in compassion, Madame Defarge reminds the reader of the dangers of forgetting the past. Dedicated to avenging an atrocity committed against her sister, Madame Defarge refuses to believe that a sin dies with the sinner and wages a merciless vendetta against the house of Evrémonde.

Based on the historical tricoteuses (knitters) who sat and knitted during trials and executions, Madame Defarge is, as Teresa Mangum has noted, likely to have been modelled specifically after Anne-Joseph Theroigne de Mericourt (1762–1817), who founded a radical women’s club and played a major role in street demonstrations.³ Mericourt was famous for her flamboyant dress, which included a riding costume and white classical robes, but she was deposed in 1793 when the people turned on her. Madame Defarge, with her sinister knitting of shrouds, is a reminder of the major role played by women, not only in the initial stages of the revolution, but also in the bloody Reign of Terror in 1794. Her presence in the novel recalls events such as those of October 5, 1789, when a crowd of nearly 6, 000 women, mostly from the working classes, marched on the Palace of Versailles. Women had a prominent role in the revolutionary movement, and equality of the sexes was an important cause for many of those who took to the streets.

The critic Linda Lewis has commented that if there is an artistic flaw surrounding Madame Defarge, it is that she is simply too engaging and too vividly drawn, to the extent that she deflects attention from the other characters.⁴ It is for this reason, argues Lewis, that Dickens has to remove her from the story before its close, lest she distract readers from Sydney Carton’s remarkable sacrifice. This ferociously vengeful woman exemplifies the revolutionaries’ deadly determination, yet at the same time she shows how the revolution loses its direction as she becomes obsessed with her own personal quest for retribution. While the narrator frequently figures Madame Defarge as a bloodthirsty tigress, we learn much more about her emotional state and inner life than we do of the conventionally good characters. Her psychological depth, combined with her sheer energy, endow her with a peculiar charisma, and although Dickens’ depictions of women are not generally regarded as terribly convincing, Madame Defarge is a terrifyingly memorable exception.

Although most obviously concerned with the French Revolution, A Tale of Two Cities is a multilayered allegory in which Dickens explores revolutionary scenarios, both historical and contemporary. On one level, Dickens uses the events of 1789 to warn his readers of the ongoing threat of revolution in 1850s Britain. In Bleak House and Little Dorrit, Dickens had exposed the dangers of failing to provide for society’s poorest members, showing that continuing to neglect the underclass could only result in an uprising. By drawing parallels between Britain and France, the past and the present, in his striking opening paragraph, Dickens invites his readers to compare the desperate, starving revolutionaries with the many impoverished, dispossessed people of their own day. He also reveals his continuing frustration at what he described as the do-nothingism of the governing classes.

The novel’s allegory is evidence that by this point in his career, Dickens was beginning to feel restricted by the constraints of realist writing. By bringing together the past and the present and making the Revolution speak for present-day happenings in England, Dickens skillfully attempted to redefine his artistic relationship with the real. While he needed to provide his readers with a satisfactory form of closure, he was increasingly conscious that conventional endings in which characters lived happily ever after were somewhat trite. Moreover, as a writer who had attempted to expose social problems in his novels and who was more conscious than most that happy endings were the privilege of a fortunate few, Dickens became resistant to conclusions that focused only on individuals. In his fiction, as in real life, it was impossible to provide solutions for widespread poverty, abuse of power, and general neglect, and this seems to have made him increasingly miserable in the 1850s.

  The end of A Tale of Two Cities, as Chris Brooks has observed, brings together the symbolic and the real.⁵ It gives the problematic Sydney Carton a sense of purpose and destiny for the first time and urges the reader to look to the future for a proper resolution. On one level Carton’s sacrifice is a chivalrous gesture of love toward the woman who can never belong to him, yet on another it is a religious allegory in which Dickens looks to God to provide the resolution that he is unable to fully envision. Having invoked religious imagery throughout the work, through references to biblical stories and through religious typology, Dickens recalls Sydney to the life he has eschewed for so long, allowing him to experience a form of divine inspiration as he crosses Paris on the night before his death. In a novel containing a number of imposters or false Messiahs, including the grave-robbing resurrection man, Jerry Cruncher, Sydney is gradually transformed into a Christ-like figure. Repeating the biblical words from John 11:25, I am the resurrection and the life, Sydney is initially metamorphosed into St. Christopher, as he carries a small child across a street, before finally becoming Christ-like in his acceptance of the fate that he will adopt for himself. Sydney’s messianic role is confirmed as he awaits his death and the little seamstress asks him, Are you dying for him? Carton’s sacrifice may be read as a type of symbolic reenactment of Christ’s death on the cross, to offer hope for the future. It also represents a recognition on Dickens’ part that the affairs of the world cannot be resolved neatly by a novelist and that he must abdicate responsibility to a higher power. This resolution provides Dickens with a way not only of ending his story, but also of emerging from the restless discontentment he had suffered throughout the 1850s.

A Tale of Two Cities is a transitional novel; its writing allowed Dickens to channel and work through a significant degree of anger, both in his personal life and in terms of the broader state of the British nation. In closing his work with a selfless act and a vision of the future, Dickens provides resolution not only for the reader, but also for himself. While change may be sweeping and inevitable, as Carton’s final vision shows, it can take time before its effects are experienced in a positive way. In acknowledging a higher plan that may be inscrutable to him, Dickens is able to move beyond his anger at political inertia and to feel a renewed optimism that is reflected in the title of his next novel, Great Expectations (1860–61).

Grace Moore’s Dickens and Empire (Ashgate, 2004) was short-listed for the 2006 New South Wales Premier’s Award for Literary Scholarship. She is the editor of Pirates and Mutineers of the Nineteenth Century (Ashgate, 2011) and the co-editor (with Andrew Maunder) of Victorian Crime, Madness and Sensation (2004), as well as a number of articles on crime fiction and Victorian and Neo-Victorian literature. Her most recent book is a study guide to A Christmas Carol (Insight, 2011). She teaches at the University of Melbourne, Australia.

PREFACE

WHEN I WAS ACTING, WITH MY CHILDREN AND FRIENDS, IN MR. WILKIE Collins’ drama of The Frozen Deep, I first conceived the main idea of this story. A strong desire was upon me then, to embody it in my own person; and I traced out in my fancy, the state of mind of which it would necessitate the presentation to an observant spectator, with particular care and -interest.

As the idea became familiar to me, it gradually shaped itself into its present form. Throughout its execution, it has had complete possession of me; I have so far verified what is done and suffered in these pages, as that I have certainly done and suffered it -all myself.

Whenever any reference (however slight) is made here to the condition of the French people before or during the Revolution, it is truly made, on the faith of trustworthy witnesses. It has been one of my hopes to add something to the popular and picturesque means of understanding that terrible time, though no one can hope to add anything to the philosophy of Mr. Carlyle’s wonderful book.¹

BOOK I

RECALLED TO LIFE

CHAPTER ONE

THE PERIOD

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.

There were a king with a large jaw and a queen with a plain face, on the throne of England; there were a king with a large jaw and a queen with a fair face, on the throne of France. In both countries it was clearer than crystal to the lords of the State preserves of loaves and fishes, that things in general were settled forever.

It was the year of Our Lord one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five. Spiritual revelations were conceded to England at that favoured period, as at this. Mrs. Southcott¹ had recently attained her five-and-twentieth blessed birthday, of whom a prophetic private in the Life Guards had heralded the sublime appearance by announcing that arrangements were made for the swallowing up of London and Westminster. Even the Cock Lane ghost² had been laid only a round dozen of years, after rapping out its messages, as the spirits of this very year last past (supernaturally deficient in originality) rapped out theirs. Mere messages in the earthly order of events had lately come to the English Crown and People, from a congress of British subjects in America: which, strange to relate, have proved more important to the human race than any communications yet received through any of the chickens of the Cock Lane brood.

France, less favoured on the whole as to matters spiritual than her sister of the shield and trident, rolled with exceeding smoothness down hill, making paper money and spending it. Under the guidance of her Christian pastors, she entertained herself, besides, with such humane achievements as sentencing a youth to have his hands cut off, his tongue torn out with pincers, and his body burned alive, because he had not kneeled down in the rain to do honour to a dirty procession of monks which passed within his view, at a distance of some fifty or sixty yards. It is likely enough that, rooted in the woods of France and Norway, there were growing trees, when that sufferer was put to death, already marked by the woodman, fate, to come down and be sawn into boards, to make a certain movable framework with a sack and a knife in it, terrible in history. It is likely enough that in the rough out-houses of some tillers of the heavy lands adjacent to Paris, there were sheltered from the weather that very day, rude carts, bespattered with rustic mire, snuffed about by pigs, and roosted in by poultry, which the farmer, death, had already set apart to be his tumbrils³ of the Revolution. But that woodman and that farmer, though they work unceasingly, work silently, and no one heard them as they went about with muffled tread: the rather, forasmuch as to entertain any suspicion that they were awake, was to be atheistical and traitorous.

In England, there was scarcely an amount of order and protection to justify much national boasting. Daring burglaries by armed men, and highway robberies, took place in the capital itself every night; families were publicly cautioned not to go out of town without removing their furniture to upholsterers’ warehouses for security; the highwayman in the dark was a City tradesman in the light, and, being recognised and challenged by his fellow-tradesman whom he stopped in his character of the Captain, gallantly shot him through the head and rode away; the mail was waylaid by seven robbers, and the guard shot three dead, and then got shot dead himself by the other four, in consequence of the failure of his ammunition: after which the mail was robbed in peace; that magnificent potentate, the Lord Mayor of London, was made to stand and deliver on Turnham Green, by one highwayman, who despoiled the illustrious creature in sight of all his retinue; prisoners in London gaols fought battles with their turnkeys, and the majesty of the law fired blunder-busses in among them, loaded with rounds of shot and ball; thieves snipped off diamond crosses from the necks of noble lords at court drawing-rooms; musketeers went into St. Giles’, to search for contraband goods, and the mob fired on the musketeers, and the musketeers fired on the mob, and nobody thought any of these occurrences much out of the common way. In the midst of them, the hangman, ever busy and ever worse than useless, was in constant requisition; now, stringing up long rows of miscellaneous criminals; now, hanging a housebreaker on Saturday who had been taken on Tuesday; now, burning people in the hand at Newgate by the dozen, and now burning pamphlets at the door of Westminster Hall; today, taking the life of an atrocious murderer, and tomorrow of a wretched pilferer who had robbed a farmer’s boy of sixpence.

All these things, and a thousand like them, came to pass in and close upon the dear old year one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five. Environed by them, while the woodman and the farmer worked unheeded, those two of the large jaws, and those other two of the plain and the fair faces, trod with stir enough, and carried their divine rights with a high hand. Thus did the year one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five conduct their greatnesses, and myriads of small creatures—the creatures of this chronicle among the rest—along the roads that lay before them.

CHAPTER TWO

THE MAIL

IT WAS THE DOVER ROAD THAT LAY, ON A FRIDAY NIGHT LATE IN NOVEMBER, before the first of the persons with whom this history has business. The Dover road lay, as to him, beyond the Dover mail, as it lumbered up Shooter’s Hill. He walked up hill in the mire by the side of the mail, as the rest of the passengers did; not because they had the least relish for walking exercise, under the circumstances, but because the hill, and the harness, and the mud, and the mail, were all so heavy, that the horses had three times already come to a stop, besides once drawing the coach across the road, with the mutinous intent of taking it back to Blackheath. Reins and whip and coachman and guard, however, in combination, had read that article of war which forbade a purpose otherwise strongly in favour of the argument, that some brute animals are endued with reason; and the team had capitulated and returned to their duty.

With drooping heads and tremulous tails, they mashed their way through the thick mud, floundering and stumbling between whiles, as if they were falling to pieces at the larger joints. As often as the driver rested them and brought them to a stand, with a wary Wo-ho! So-ho then! the near leader violently shook his head and everything upon it—like an unusually emphatic horse, denying that the coach could be got up the hill. Whenever the leader made this rattle, the passenger started, as a nervous passenger might, and was disturbed in mind.

There was a steaming mist in all the hollows, and it had roamed in its forlornness up the hill, like an evil spirit, seeking rest and finding none. A clammy and intensely cold mist, it made its slow way through the air in ripples that visibly followed and overspread one another, as the waves of an unwholesome sea might do. It was dense enough to shut out everything from the light of the coach-lamps but these its own workings, and a few yards of road; and the reek of the labouring horses steamed into it, as if they had made it all.

Two other passengers, besides the one, were plodding up the hill by the side of the mail. All three were wrapped to the cheekbones and over the ears, and wore jackboots. Not one of the three could have said, from anything he saw, what either of the other two was like; and each was hidden under almost as many wrappers from the eyes of the mind, as from the eyes of the body, of his two companions. In those days, travellers were very shy of being confidential on a short notice, for anybody on the road might be a robber or in league with robbers. As to the latter, when every posting-house and ale house could produce somebody in the Captain’s pay, ranging from the landlord to the lowest stable nondescript, it was the likeliest thing upon the cards. So the guard of the Dover mail thought to himself, that Friday night in November, one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five, lumbering up Shooter’s Hill, as he stood on his own particular perch behind the mail, beating his feet, and keeping an eye and a hand on the arm-chest before him, where a loaded blunderbuss lay at the top of six or eight loaded horse-pistols, deposited on a substratum of cutlass.

The Dover mail was in its usual genial position that the guard suspected the passengers, the passengers suspected one another and the guard, they all suspected everybody else, and the coachman was sure of nothing but the horses; as to which cattle he could with a clear conscience have taken his oath on the two Testaments that they were not fit for the journey.

Wo-ho! said the coachman. So, then! One more pull and you’re at the top and be damned to you, for I have had trouble enough to get you to it! Joe!

Halloa! the guard replied.

What o’clock do you make it, Joe?

Ten minutes, good, past eleven.

My blood! ejaculated the vexed coachman, and not atop of Shooter’s yet! Tst! Yah! Get on with you!

The emphatic horse, cut short by the whip in a most decided negative, made a decided scramble for it, and the three other horses followed suit. Once more, the Dover mail struggled on, with the jackboots of its passengers squashing along by its side. They had stopped when the coach stopped, and they kept close company with it. If any one of the three had had the hardihood to propose to another to walk on a little ahead into the mist and darkness, he would have put himself in a fair way of getting shot instantly as a highwayman.

The last burst carried the mail to the summit of the hill. The horses stopped to breathe again, and the guard got down to skid the wheel for the descent, and open the coach-door to let the passengers in.

Tst! Joe! cried the coachman in a warning voice, looking down from his box.

What do you say, Tom?

They both listened.

I say a horse at a canter coming up, Joe.

I say a horse at a gallop, Tom, returned the guard, leaving his hold of the door, and mounting nimbly to his place. Gentlemen! In the king’s name, all of you!

With this hurried adjuration, he cocked his blunderbuss, and stood on the offensive.

The passenger booked by this history, was on the coach-step, getting in; the two other passengers were close behind him, and about to follow. He remained on the step, half in the coach and half out of; they remained in the road below him. They all looked from the coachman to the guard, and from the guard to the coachman, and listened. The coachman looked back and the guard looked back, and even the emphatic leader pricked up his ears and looked back, without contradicting.

The stillness consequent on the cessation of the rumbling and labouring of the coach, added to the stillness of the night, made it very quiet indeed. The panting of the horses communicated a tremulous motion to the coach, as if it were in a state of agitation. The hearts of the passengers beat loud enough perhaps to be heard; but at any rate, the quiet pause was audibly expressive of people out of breath, and holding the breath, and having the pulses quickened by expectation.

The sound of a horse at a gallop came fast and furiously up the hill.

So-ho! the guard sang out, as loud as he could roar. Yo there! Stand! I shall fire!

The pace was suddenly checked, and, with much splashing and floundering, a man’s voice called from the mist, Is that the Dover mail?

Never you mind what it is! the guard retorted. What are you?

"Is that the Dover mail?"

Why do you want to know?

I want a passenger, if it is.

What passenger?

Mr. Jarvis Lorry.

Our booked passenger showed in a moment that it was his name. The guard, the coachman, and the two other passengers eyed him distrustfully.

Keep where you are, the guard called to the voice in the mist, because, if I should make a mistake, it could never be set right in your lifetime. Gentleman of the name of Lorry answer straight.

What is the matter? asked the passenger, then, with mildly quavering speech. Who wants me? Is it Jerry?

(I don’t like Jerry’s voice, if it is Jerry, growled the guard to himself. He’s hoarser than suits me, is Jerry.)

Yes, Mr. Lorry.

What is the matter?

A despatch sent after you from over yonder. T. and Co.

I know this messenger, guard, said Mr. Lorry, getting down into the road—assisted from behind more swiftly than politely by the other two passengers, who immediately scrambled into the coach, shut the door, and pulled up the window. He may come close; there’s nothing wrong.

I hope there ain’t, but I can’t make so ’Nation sure of that, said the guard, in gruff soliloquy. Hallo you!

Well! And hallo you! said Jerry, more hoarsely than before.

Come on at a footpace! D’ye mind me? And if you’ve got holsters to that saddle o’ yourn, don’t let me see your hand go nigh ’em. For I’m a devil at a quick mistake, and when I make one it takes the form of Lead. So now let’s look at you.

The figures of a horse and rider came slowly through the eddying mist, and came to the side of the mail, where the passenger stood. The rider stooped, and, casting up his eyes at the guard, handed the passenger a small folded paper. The rider’s horse was blown, and both horse and rider were covered with mud, from the hoofs of the horse to the hat of the man.

Guard! said the passenger, in a tone of quiet business confidence.

The watchful guard, with his right hand at the stock of his raised blunderbuss, his left at the barrel, and his eye on the horseman, answered curtly, Sir.

There is nothing to apprehend. I belong to Tellson’s Bank. You must know Tellson’s Bank in London. I am going to Paris on business. A crown to drink. I may read this?

If so be as you’re quick, sir.

He opened it in the light of the coach-lamp on that side, and read—first to himself and then aloud: ‘Wait at Dover for mam’selle.’ It’s not long, you see, guard. Jerry, say that my answer was, recalled to life.

Jerry started in his saddle. That’s a blazing strange answer, too, said he, at his hoarsest.

Take that message back, and they will know that I received this, as well as if I wrote. Make the best of your way. Good night.

With those words the passenger opened the coach-door and got in; not at all assisted by his fellow-passengers, who had expeditiously secreted their watches and purses in their boots, and were now making a general pretence of being asleep. With no more definite purpose than to escape the hazard of originating any other kind of action.

The coach lumbered on again, with heavier wreaths of mist closing round it as it began the descent. The guard soon replaced his blunderbuss in his arm-chest, and, having looked to the rest of its contents, and having looked to the supplementary pistols that he wore in his belt, looked to a smaller chest beneath his seat, in which there were a few smith’s tools, a couple of torches, and a tinder-box. For he was furnished with that completeness that if the coach-lamps had been blown and stormed out, which did occasionally happen, he had only to shut himself up inside, keep the flint and steel sparks well off the straw, and get a light with tolerable safety and ease (if he were lucky) in five minutes.

Tom! softly over the coach-roof.

Hallo, Joe.

Did you hear the message?

I did, Joe.

What did you make of it, Tom?

Nothing at all, Joe.

That’s a coincidence, too, the guard mused, for I made the same of it myself.

Jerry, left alone in the mist and darkness, dismounted meanwhile, not only to ease his spent horse, but to wipe the mud from his face, and shake the wet out of his hat-brim, which might be capable of holding about half a gallon. After standing with the bridle over his

Reviews for A Tale of Two Cities (Barnes & Noble Signature Editions)

[eyejaybee · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I am not sure that anything I can say will add any value to the wealth of critical comment already available for this classic novel. I first read it towards the end of the last millennium (to lend an appropriately archaic feel) as one of the set books for my English Literature O level (the predecessor of what we would today call GCSEs). I was fortunate to enjoy the support of some excellent English teachers throughout my time at school, yet even their attentive ministrations failed to save this book from falling prey to the fate of most works that are encountered as compulsory reading. As a fifteen-year-old I found it very tedious and longwinded, and could not then imagine I might ever read it again for pleasure.To be fair, I think that tedious and longwinded are not always unfair when applied to Dickens, and would cite either Barnaby Rudge (surely there is an initial D missing from that surname) or Our Mutual Friend as evidence for the prosecution. (Indeed, it is quite a feat on Dickens’ part to make tedious a novel that starts so promisingly, with bodies being dragged from the Thames late at night.)They are not, however, fair for A Tale of Two Cities. Going off at another tangent, I have been struggling to think of another book which has such famous first AND last sentences: there are plenty that can offer one or the other, but few that manage both. The story is, of course, well known, so I won’t waste everyone’s time with a synopsis of the plot. There are some excellent characters: Jarvis Lorry, the serious solicitor who has given his professional life in service of Tellson’s Bank is a paragon of probity, always clad in various shades of brown. Not a man overburdened with humour, and perhaps not one with whom one might wish to be closeted on a long journey (although that fate befalls various people throughout the book). Jerry Cruncher is a hardy perennial from the Dickens stable: a Cockney, salt of the earth type, vaguely reminiscent of Silas Wegg, though better served in the leg department, or less chirpy Sam Weller, who is always on hand to do Mr Lorry’s or Tellson’s bidding, but who has a dark secret. C J Stryver, the pompous, overbearing barrister is brilliantly drawn, hyperinflated with his own self-importance and clothed in obtuseness as in armour of triple steel. Paradoxically, the more central figures seem less substantial. Charles Darnay (another man with a secret) is rather two dimensional, and the reader almost wishes that his lookalike, the diffident and dissolute lawyer Sidney Carton, whose nocturnal efforts keep legal Stryver’s practice afloat, but with precious little acknowledgement of that debt) had won Lucie Manette’s love.Like most of Dickens’ n ovels, this was published in weekly or fortnightly instalments, a fact reflected in the peaks and troughs of action throughout, as the writer carefully regulated the flow to leave sufficiently gripping cliff-hangers. Dickens was a master at conflicting tone. The chapter in which Jerry Cruncher’s sun follows his father on a nocturnal expedition, expecting to see him go fishing, is hilarious, although the mirth is in sharp juxtaposition with a chapter of huge sadness.This is a novel that repays reading for pleasure. It is also a more manageable length for modern taste than some of his heftier tomes. I read it in the excellent Penguin Classics edition which offers extensive background notes throughout the story, and an introduction full of insight (possibly aimed more at informing a re-reading, than for someone coming to the story for the first time.

[ibkennedy · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Why has it taken me so long to go back and read this incredible book?

[cecrow · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Having read my way through Dickens in publication order to this point, I'm of two minds about this entry. I probably did this Dickens novel a disservice - and myself - by reading it on the heels of "Citizens" by Siman Schama, a thick non-fiction history about the French Revolution. Dickens' overdramatization of revolutionary elements rubbed me wrong in a few places, and that had some side effects. I was irritated with the more-than-usual obfuscating language in the opening chapters, and their thick layer of sentimentality I hadn't seen so much of since The Old Curiosity Shop, my least favourite. It's a more poetic look at mobs and mob behaviour than he's done before, but weaker for not being as close or insightful a study as we saw in Barnaby Rudge. This version relies on symbols for brevity, the Defarges standing in for practically every historical figure on the revolutionary side.I struggled to find a favourite character among these many reversions of prior Dickens figures, settling for Dr. Manette because of his unusual ailment but only reminding me of how mild the Bastille experience actually was for its inmates. Besides the usual Dickens flaws - the boatload of coincidence, weak female characterizations, domestic abuse presented as humour - what impressed me least was the plot. Dickens had his end in mind and drives straight towards it without any side trips, only throwing in some revolutionary glimpses for decoration. That's hardly the stuff of Bleak House. And then comes the other hand. In its delineated third part, there are improvements in every respect. Dr. Manette acquires a new fascinating aspect to his character, Charles earned my sympathy, and the plot introduces some nasty twists in its path. Most important, the revolutionary period of France is thrown into the bold and detailed relief that was lacking to this point. Finally I obtained a sense of what it would truly be like to live in the midst of that hair-raising Terror tumult with its irrational courts and bloodshed in the streets, and it fits with all the facts I know plus adds a few I didn't. Therese Defarge takes on an especially epic scale of menace with her sewing needles, possibly earning the crown among Dickens villains. And there are braver examples here of men facing death than the one Fagin set so long ago. I'm reminded of David Copperfield, with its strange lull through the middle, except that the problems here extend through the beginning as well. Is a fantastic and stirring third act enough to compensate for all? It raises this novel well above Curiosity Shop, and I think it's stronger than Hard Times, another of Dickens' shorter novels, but it cannot rank among his best.

[nx74defiant · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Great story, Great opening line. Great closing line.Not the easiest read with Dickens old fashion style of writing.Set during the French Revolution and the reign of terror. There are time jumps.

[mojomomma_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Lucy & Charles, Dr. Minette, and the menacing de Farge's. Hearing it, rather than reading it, helped me get through this classic with some understanding of the plot and what was going on. I will have to try some other Dickens because I really enjoyed this one!

[alanna1122 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

When my high schooler was complaining about having to read this for school I took the opportunity to read along in solidarity and also as an excuse to final read something that I wished I had read many years ago and consider a gap in my classics reading experience.So my kid didn't love it, but I really did. To be fair - in college this sort of thing was what I gravitated towards and I read quite a fair amount of 17th-19th century lit, so it didn't have the same intimidation factor as it had for my kid. In fact, I kept (inwardly) marvelling over how short it was for Dickens. Anyway, for me, it was a treat. The story was most of the time pretty gripping. Granted, there were interludes that were v e r y slow but most of it felt snappy to me. It made me contemplate the French Revolution in a way that I think I failed to when studying it in college. The horror of the reality of it is really hard to contemplate. And its relative recentness is also sobering. Also, France's recovery is pretty amazing to think about.Even though it was certainly very heavy, I am sad that it is over - and I am so glad I finally read it.

[connorshirs · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

An actual thriller. Loved it and cried.

[musicformovies · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Historical Fiction set during the Terror of the French Revolution by Charles Dickens; although starting at a slow pace, and sometimes exhibiting a confusing change of time and setting, by the time you reach Book III it really takes off and beats out any modern Hollywood action drama film by far. Aside from having perhaps two of the most well known literary quotations at the beginning and end of the book, it is a classic in how it deals with the nature of human perseverance during the darkness of times, the nature of sacrifice, and fickleness of the mob versus the solidity of individual principle. A book more relevant for our time than I'd like. A must read.

[caanderson-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Classic book drama. What an wonderful story of treason, romance, and danger.

[dragonflydancing · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

One of my all-time favourites, because of Dicken's political and social insight, and because of how the story ends with a man's ultimate sacrifice for the sake of love.

[vahankinson · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A historical fiction novel from Dickens which follows a group of characters in London and Paris at the start of the French Revolution. The story follows a group of characters including an ex-prisoner of the Bastille who is dealing with the after effects of his imprisonment; a French nobleman who is trying to break free of his high social status and a pair of revolutionaries (one of whom knits constantly). There is an interesting mix of characters and the street riots along with the storming of the Bastille were exceptional. The juxtaposition of the two cities is reflected in the characters, and the heartless and brutal nature of the revolution is reflected in the story.

[juliestielstra · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The annual read, after the annual viewing of the film on Thanksgiving Day (Ronald Colman version, only, thank you). It has to be the mark of brilliance that even after a dozen readings, each time you harbor a secret hope that maybe THIS year he won't (spoiler alert...) get his head cut off. No better opening and closing lines in literature.

[electrascaife · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Set during the French Revolution, the story follows a French doctor, wrongfully imprisoned for years, who reunites with his daughter and moves to London. There, they settle into a comfortable life, the daughter happily marries and starts a family, all unknowing that they will be pulled back to Paris and into the horror of the revolution. This is Dickens at his finest, weaving various threads into such an intricate pattern and only hinting here and there at the final dramatic design, in which all the characters play a surprising part in relation to one another. Thrilling in parts and tender in others, this ticks all the right boxes for me. I loved it.

[kevinrubin · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..." begins A Tale of Two Cities and the book itself felt like that to me. Some of it was really good and some of it was quite a struggle to get through.In the first parts of it I only really enjoyed the scenes that took place around Fleet Street and The Strand in London, places it was easy for me to imagine after wandering around there quite a bit on a business trip, and I didn't really get into it again until all the main characters had made their way to Paris.I didn't enjoy the comic aspects of Jerry Cruncher or Miss Pross, feeling they were completely unbelievable and out of place in what was otherwise pretty dramatic. But once in Paris they weren't funny anymore and had pretty serious roles to play.I certainly didn't understand Sydney Carton. I knew he loved and would never have a relationship with Lucie Manette, but he kept going on about his life was a waste and making it sound like he'd done bad things, but there's no hint what anything might've been. All we see of him is his heavy drinking, deep thinking and general rudeness to everyone else. It was only clear at the end what he was willing to do for Lucie's happiness...The heaviest hitting line in the book was Madame Defarge, one of the leaders of the French Revolution after her own personal revenge against the aristocrats, when her husband asks if they might've executed enough people so far and she replies "tell the Wind and Fire where to stop. But don't tell me."Overall, it wasn't my favorite Dickens book. It had some good parts but I had to really work hard to not give up reading it.

[geoffsc-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I thought it was about time I read a classic.
I loved the opening passage "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness ..."
At the end it was just as good a page turner as modern novels.
An eye opener, I was astounded at the brutality of the revolution, the inhumanity of the revolutionaries. I presume quite historically accurate.
Good portrayal of characters and subtle revelation of relationships.

[rodweston · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

It is probably my twentieth reading of this book. It inspires me every time.

It is a story of redemption of several, but none more so than of Sydney Carton. Beauty in the midst of madness and terror.

[linyarai · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

A great classic.

[thornton37814 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Men in love with the same woman join the French revolution. It's a love triangle involving a married couple and another man. Madame Dafarge, obsessed with her knitting, presents a sinister character. The far kinder Lucie Manette is devoted to her father. Will those accused of treason keep their heads? Although this is one of Dickens' classic works, it's not a favorite. The memorable opening line is about as good as the novel gets for me. This was a re-read, although it's been several years since I read it.

[comfypants · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

The French Revolution takes an interest in a family of expatriates.2/4 (Indifferent).There are some good characters (and also some terrible ones who exist purely to be noble or evil). About half the book is spent dwelling on Big Important Historical Tragedy in a way that guarantees the book is regarded as a Big Important Historical Work. A Tale of Two Cities is to Charles Dickens what Schindler's List is to Steven Spielberg.

[paperpuss · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

over rated

[jonfaith · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

It was my first Dickens, it was not my last. It was summer in Chicago and I was surrounded by lovely albeit unruly children. Oh dear, it was a struggle at times, watching three kids while my wife and their mother were in the city. Still I finished the novel over a long afternoon without drugging my charges.

It is a story of sacrifice, maybe of redemption. I felt for everyone, zealots and drunkards alike. The concluding scaffold scene engendered tears, it has to be admitted. Is there a better novel about the French Revolution, its aspirations and its contradictions?

[eraderneely · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Suuuuuper glad I read this as an adult. I'm sure I appreciated it a lot more than I would have at 15. Not sure if it was reading via audiobook (Dickens' writing is incredibly lyrical), but I really enjoyed this book.

[foggidawn · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A family is caught up in the drama and terror of the French Revolution.Often I can summarize the plot of a classic, even one I have not read, because it's such a touchstone in the general culture. Not so this book. I knew the first line and the last line, but not much about what happened in between (just, blah, blah, blah, French Revolution, blah, blah, blah...). Now, having read it, I still find it a little difficult to summarize. It's a great story, full of love and sacrifice, high ideals and Revolutionary fervor. As with all of the classics I've tackled this year, I'm glad I read it -- and (which is not the case with all the classics I read this year), I'm keeping it on my shelf against the possibility of future rereadings.

[tommi180744 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A Tale of Two Cities with David Copperfield & Great Expectations acclaimed by some as one of the finest of Dickens many superb novels, however, other critics have been much less positive: It really does depend on the reader's viewpoint of Dicken's blend of historical-fiction with very well known events & and cities. It is a story that evokes the thrilling excitement and ghastly butchery of the French Revolution & all the social emotional explosion surrounding it told through the life, love and experiences of French Dr. Manette in Paris, & his daughter Lucie in London. Every student or lover of literature should have read it.

[gmillar_8 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is book number 22 of the Kings Treasuries of Literature Series. Beside the text of the story itself, the book contains commentaries on: The structure of the story, the historical basis of the story, a memoir of Dickens and some notes and suggestions for student readers. As with all of these little books, it is a pleasure to hold, to see on your shelf and to read.

[judithrs · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A Tale of Cities. Charles Dickens. Open Road. I haven’t read any Dickens since high school and I enjoyed this as it was quite a change from the books I usually read even for book club. I enjoyed the love story and the description of life in France before and after the revolutions. Faults on both sides, friends, and Dickens showed them. I was only familiar with the first and last paragraphs of the book before I read it. And those are still the best lines. If you like to sink into Dickens, this is a good one.

[threadnsong · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

There is much that is typical Dickens in this book, most especially the childlike Lucie with her blond curls and her hands clasped before her, that is not surprising. By this book, though, the bits of literary brilliance that are shown in "Little Dorrit" and "Hard Times" come to the fore. The opening paragraph and the final chapters are this brilliance: "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times" and "It is a far, far better thing that I do than I have ever done" are some of the miracles of the English language and the primary reason that I have undertaken this journey of reading Dickens' corpus with a F2F group.Looking at this book with a 21st Century mindset, there is much that I find lacking: the lack of true character development until the very end with Sydney Carlton (who is mentioned so seldom) and the letter of Dr. Manette that sheds light on his story; the opening of the book with a carriage ride that leaves so very, very much out as any sort of action; and a plot other than people caught up in the bloody part of the French Revolution. But within itself and its time, it does much that would appeal to generations of readers: bringing characters into existence that help explain the human toll of the French Revolution and Reign of Terror, including the years leading up to the storming of the Bastille. The Revolution did not happen in a vacuum, and Dickens explains this peripheral damage very well and without holding back.

[justagirlwithabook · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I read this one on a plane on the way to England and actually enjoyed it. It isn't my favorite of all the Dickens I've read but it was valuable in and of itself. Everything really leads up to the last moments, which are insanely devastating in so many ways but touching. It didn't bring tears to my eyes - it didn't touch me on a deeply emotional level - but it was good. Definitely recommend.

[csdaley-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Still one of my favorites and maybe the best last line of any book ever.

[pamv-1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

All I can say about this book is "I got through it"! Without the spark notes, I would not have understood a single thing here, but I have officially read a classic because I wanted to, not because I was forced to.