Books

1859. London: Chapman & Hall, 1859. Large 8vo, viii, 254 pp. Frontispiece, engraved title & 14 plates by H.K. Browne. Without list of plates. Polished green calf, backstrip gilt with red and brown gilt-lettered labels, marbled edges and endpapers. Binding a little rubbed and worn at corners, spot of worming to backstrip, contents clean with minimal toning to the plates, small address ticket on front free endpaper, overall very good. § First edition in book form of Dickens' great novel of darkness and light, containing 7 of the 8 first issue points identified by Smith (the final two letters of "himself" on p.166 are well printed). The list of plates is not present. “When Dickens began the publication of All the Year Round, the successor of Household Words, he realized the necessity of making a strong start. So he began writing A Tale of Two Cities, publishing the first of the serial in the opening number of his new periodical... As a novel of great popularity it probably…

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.