Special Collections
Book of the Month, June 2009
A Tale of Two Cities
Charles Dickens; ill. by H.K. Browne
London: Chapman and Hall, 1859
[S.L.] I [Dickens - 1859]
‘It was the best of times, it was the best of times …’; ‘It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known’ – thus begin and end Charles Dickens’s novel A Tale of Two Cities, 150 years old this year.
The two cities of the title are Paris at the time of the French Revolution (modelled on Thomas Carlyle’s The French Revolution) and London. Dickens writes in the preface that he conceived the idea while acting Wilkie Collins’s The Frozen Deep with his children and friends, and that it subsequently took complete possession of him: ‘I have so far verified what is done and suffered in these pages, as that I have certainly done and suffered it all myself’.
The novel was serialised in Dickens’s new periodical, All the Year Round, from 30 April April to 26 November 1859, before being published in book form. The work, Dickens’s second historical novel, was an experiment, being a compact narrative which relied less than Dickens’s previous works on characterisation, dialogue and humour. Early critics complained of the lack of humour, and the book is still not numbered among Dickens’s major works; nonetheless, it later became widely popular, assisted by dramatisations and film adaptations.
This copy is from the library of Sir Louis Sterling (1879-1958), who liked Dickens and acquired first editions of most of his novels. Following fashion of the time, Sterling or an earlier owner had the book rebound by a West End binder in red morocco with gilt tooling; the original cloth binding is bound in at the end. The picture by Phiz is of a revolutionary scene.
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