A Tale of Two Cities

May 2023 - revised by zardox (no changes to book content). Verified ebook for complete description, cover image, TOC, order of book parts, and epub format error checking. Some publisher advertising removed. Paperback, 409 pages Published: 1859 Edition: Barnes & Noble Classics Series (2004) Goodreads Best Books of the 19th Century Greatest Books (amalgamated list of best books) Introduction by: Gillen D’Arcy Wood “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times . . .” With these famous words, Charles Dickens plunges the reader into one of history’s most explosive eras—the French Revolution. From the storming of the Bastille to the relentless drop of the guillotine, Dickens vividly captures the terror and upheaval of that tumultuous period. At the center is the novel’s hero, Sydney Carton, a lazy, alcoholic attorney who, inspired by a woman, makes the supreme sacrifice on the bloodstained streets of Paris. One of Dickens’s most exciting novels, A Tale of Two Cities is a stirring classic of love, revenge, and resurrection. After eighteen years as a political prisoner in the Bastille, the ageing Doctor Manette is finally released and reunited with his daughter in England. There the lives of two very different men, Charles Darnay, an exiled French aristocrat, and Sydney Carton, a disreputable but brilliant English lawyer, become enmeshed through their love for Lucie Manette. From the tranquil roads of London, they are drawn against their will to the vengeful, bloodstained streets of Paris at the height of the Reign of Terror, and they soon fall under the lethal shadow of La Guillotine.