Books

First edition in book form of Dickens's great historical romance, in an attractive contemporary binding. "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 represents Dickens's final collaboration with his long-term illustrator, "Phiz". The first state has p. 213 numbered incorrectly and the signature "b" on the list of plates, as here. The story was published in book form in November 1859, following serialization in Dickens's journal All the Year Round from April to November. Octavo (211 x 127 mm). Contemporary blue half calf, red and green spine labels, compartments tooled in gilt and blind, dog-tooth blind roll on sides and corners, marbled sides, endpapers, and edges. Etched frontispiece and vignette title page, 14 etched plates, by Hablot Knight Browne (Phiz). Bound without adverts. Spine sunned to green, rubbing to sides, small wear to edges, trivial split to front inner hinge, sporadic foxing. A very good 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.