A Tale of Two Cities (Penguin Classics) (Paperback)

by Charles Dickens (Author), Richard Maxwell (Editor) "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..." (more)
Key Phrases: immovable close, wigged gentleman, eight great towers, Miss Pross, Madame Defarge, Doctor Manette (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
Edited with an Introduction and Notes by Richard Maxwell.

About the Author
Charles Dickens (1812-70) was a political reporter and journalist whose popularity was established by the phenomenally successful Pickwick Papers (1836-7). His novels captured and held the public imagination over a period of more than thirty years. Richard Maxwell teaches in the Comparative Literature & English departments at Yale.

Product Details

• Paperback: 544 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Classics (May 27, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0141439602
• ISBN-13: 978-0141439600
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (64 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #4,178 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

53 of 56 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Turbulent times in London and Paris, April 27, 2005

By	Peter Reeve (Thousand Oaks, CA USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

The period from 1775 - the outbreak of the American Revolution - to 1789 - the storming of the Bastille - is the turbulent setting of this uncharacteristic Dickens novel. It is his only novel that lacks comic relief, is one of only two that are not set in nineteenth-century England and is also unusual in lacking a primary central character. London and Paris are the real protagonists in this tale, much as the cathedral was the 'hero' of Hugo's Notre Dame de Paris. Dickens was writing at a time of great turmoil in his personal life, having just separated from his wife, and no doubt the revolutionary theme was in tune with his mental state.

The result is a complex, involving plot with some of the best narrative writing to be found anywhere, and the recreation of revolutionary Paris is very convincing. The device of having two characters that look identical may seem hackneyed to modern readers, but it is here employed with greater plausibility than in Twain's Pudd'nhead Wilson or Collins's The Woman in White.

Dickens was inspired to write this story by reading Carlyle's newly published history of the French Revolution. Those events and their aftermath stood in relation to their time much as World Wars I and II do to ours, that is, fading from living memory into history, yet their legacy still very much with us. In many nineteenth-century novels, especially Russian and British works, you get a sense of unease among the aristocracy that the revolution will spread to their own back yard. In the case of Russia, of course, it eventually did.

I have often recommended A Tale of Two Cities as a good introduction to Dickens for younger readers. This is based on my own experiences, because it was a set book in my English Literature class when I was 15 and I remember thoroughly enjoying it. Yes, it is challenging, with its somewhat archaic language and its slow development, but you cannot progress to an enjoyment of great literature without being challenged.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Awesome - my favorite Dicken's novel!, December 11, 2006

By	Patrick D. Goonan "www.meaningful-life.us" (Pleasanton, CA) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

I like all of Dicken's work because of his ability to bring a place and period to life as well as his gift for creating round characters that seem like real people you can reach out and touch. This novel certainly represents these qualities, but has a dark quality with no type of comic relief. It is intense and it captures the psychological and emotional climate of the the French revolution in a visceral way.

This novel which parallels the rise of the French revolution, compares and contrasts life in two cities Paris and London. It also develops a very intricate plot that is difficult to follow if one does not read steadily. In other words, it's not a light plot that you can set down for a few days and pick back up. On the other hand, it's extremely engaging and you won't want to put it down.

When I read it, I actually bought the Cliff's notes because I needed to set the book down for a few days at a time. When I picked it up again, I found the Cliff's notes useful to help me engage again without a lot of looking back through the book for all the twists and turns in the plot and lives of the characters.

This is a great novel in every respect, but it is not a happy one. It captures the harsh reality of the French Revolution in deep way. If you are studying the French Revolution, I would say it's a must read to truly get the spirit of what was going on. I don't believe history books can do it justice, you need the inside view which this provides.

Lastly, if you are simply enjoy a good story, you will like this. Don't expect a "everyone lived happily ever" type ending, however. This is heavy stuff, almost in the spirit of a Russian existentialist novel.

25 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Every evil will be brought to its earthly justice..., August 2, 2004

By	Matthew M. Yau "Voracious reader" (San Francisco, CA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

A Tale of Two Cities offers a swift, exciting story and an unforgettable rendering of the French Revolution, in a lethal, vengeful and exiguous Paris and a tranquil London. This novel as Dickens's most memorable effort to see a world in a very confined space indeed: a work very short by its nature and yet in which hundreds, even thousands of people do appear in a state of belligerence. The book is riddled with the howling mobs, epic scenes and tightly packed incidents that concentrate on a few central characters. It is an intimate piece of work, which somehow deftly evokes the epic presence of crowds and the vast movements of history, as well as the engrossing terror and compassion of individual characters.

Within the condensations of historical time, the lives of the characters play themselves out. Besides the dreadful Madame Defarge of whose power derives from her surreptitious but all engrossing lust for vengeance on the Evremonde family (aristocrats), Dickens is particularly concerned with three men, all obsessed with the same dreamy, beautiful and svelte figure of desire: Lucie Manette. Doctor Manette, who had been for 18 years jailed by the Evremonde in the Bastille to cover up its atrocious crimes, reveals much more fully his character through actions than by mere dialogue and introspection. Realizing his tormented imprisonment that has thrown him into a delirious repression as strength, he announces himself to the Revolutionists and pleads for Charles Darnay's life and liberty.

An heir of the Evremonde family but lives under the name Darnay in England, his ambiguous historical guilt is converged through a crucial historical ellipsis. The other central figure is Sydney Carton; a lawyer with thwarted ambition that takes on a mythical aspect at the end to save his friends and so to fulfill his promise. If Charles Darnay is the society's innocent victim who suffers because of the sins of his forefathers and of Madame Defarge's inveterate hatred of the aristocrats, Sydney Carton, who suffers from an inexplicable melancholy, is the sacrificial hero who redeems those sins in an re-enactment of Christ's expiatory death.

The novel is also redolent of the theme of resurrection: the release of people from the realm of death and from their own morbid isolation. The novel begins with the rescue of Doctor Manette from the proximity of the Bastille. Apprehension, repression and revulsion weigh in his mind and make it difficult for him to utter a word upon the topic that oppresses him. There has always been a strong and extraordinary revival of the excruciating train of thought and remembrance that are the first cause of his malady. Charles Darnay, who is accused by being a traitor and forfeit to the French people, has to be rescued from the realm of death, or more precisely, the wrath of Madame Defarge by, ironically, Doctor Manette. Imbued from her childhood with a brooding sense of wrong, she is utterly implacable and inimical. She is intransigent to recognize in her determination to exterminate the entire Evremondes insanity. The inveteracy of her pursuit is unfathomable for she is completely deprived of pity and compassion. Her surreptitious, conspired management of Charles Darnay's arrest is cunning but not without immense cruelty. The scheme manifests in a woven form, or knitting, which represents calculation, patience, pertinence, and an urge to retaliate.

The doctor realizes that up to that time, his imprisonment and repression have been associated in the minds of others with his personal affliction, deprivation and weakness. But he feels now, that his suffering is strength and power with which he can deliver Charles Darnay. The urge to returning to France has passed through his mind often as he cannot help thinking and having had some sympathy for the miserable people. Letter from an old servant who is in peril rouses the latent uneasiness in his mind to a vigorous resolution. One can immediately discern Darnay's futile attempt to save the servant and win influence with the revolutionists in order to do good, for no sooner has he arrived in Paris than he languishes in jail. The lack of reason and pity on Madame Defarge'' behalf is exposed to the fullest extent as one realizes how she has cunningly managed and manipulated the actions behind the scenes by letting Doctor Manette expend his force in a mock victory, accusing Darnay and re-arresting him, arraigning him to a new trial, and using the doctor's own manuscript on which written his confession and curse of his persecutors hidden in the Bastille against Darnay. All this Madame Defarge has premeditated in order to lure Darnay back to Paris and put whom on trial as a former aristocrat and a member of the very culpable Evremonde family who also happens to wrong the doctor.

The root of all the terror and bloodthirst, or even the Revolution, under Dickens's hand in this novel, is Madame Defarge's hatred for the Evremonde who had caused the death of her family. She is therefore the revolutionary impulse incarnate who is held together by class-hatred. Stony, absorbed in her knitting, seemingly unobservant, she is in absolute control of the mob. With her indomitable will she seem less a person than a force of destiny. She might have imbued the mob with her incendiary speeches but the real diabolism of the revolutionary mob rests in its overweening arrogance, its god-like assumption of power over the lives of the French people. Portrayal of the Revolution is achieved through an acceleration of events such as the arrest on mere suspicion, the mock trials and sheer murderousness.

Lastly the concept of martyrdom contained within the novel is to a good deal paradoxical: a Christianly, self-sacrificial death with a resurrection context and a prophetic countenance that brings together and contrasts ideas of justice and mercy. It echoes with the opening paradox "it was the best of times, it was the worst of times...."

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