Books

London: Chapman and Hall, 1860. [Classic Literature] FIRST EDITION, THIRD ISSUE. Octavo (22 x 14cm), pp.[2] x; 254 [2]. With 16 engraved plates by "Phiz", including a frontispiece and vignette title page. Lacking the signature 'b' on the list of plates, and the pagination of p.213 is corrected, but 'affectionately' is misspelled on p.134, and the name of 'Stryver' is misspelled on the plate at p.94. Publisher's green cloth with gilt titles to spine and blind decoration to boards. A black ink ownership to flyleaf. Light spotting to plates, and a bit of a lean. Spine toned to brown, with some wear to head and tail; light wear to boards. An attractive copy in the publisher's original binding. Very good. One of Dickens most accessible tales, set at the time of the French Revolution, and first published in November 1859. The fortunes of two men - Charles Darnay, an exiled French aristocrat, and Sydney Carton, a disreputable but brilliant English lawyer - become entwined through their…

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.