Books

First edition in book form, attractively bound. Dickens's great historical romance, set during the French Revolution, remains one of his best-known and most widely read works. "In its tightly organized and highly romantic melodrama and the near-absence of typical 'Dickensian' humour and humorous characters, A Tale of Two Cities certainly stands apart from all his other novels" (ODNB). The novel was issued in monthly parts from April to November 1859 and serialized in Dickens's weekly journal All the Year Round in the same period, before publication in book form in November that year. Octavo (216 x 135 mm). Recent red half morocco, dark green morocco label, marbled sides and edges. Engraved frontispiece, vignette title and 14 plates by Hablot Knight Browne (Phiz). This copy with the secondary state of p. 213 correctly numbered and the secondary state of the list of plates without signature "b". A couple of minor blemishes to plates, far less pronounced than usual. An excellent copy. Eckel, pp. 86-90; Gimbel A142; Hatton & Cleaver p. 331; Kremers, pp. 108-12; Smith 13.

A Tale of Two Cities is a historical novel by Charles Dickens, set in London and Paris before and during the French Revolution. The novel tells the story of the French Doctor Manette, his 18-year-long imprisonment in the Bastille in Paris and his release to live in London with his daughter Lucie, whom he had never met. The story is set against the conditions that led up to the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror.