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Charles Dickens – A TALE OF TWO CITIES : Collins Classics
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A TALE OF TWO CITIES : Collins Classics

Charles Dickens
BRAND NEW, PAPERBACK

RM15.00

A Fiction Explores Themes Of Love, Sacrifice, Violence, & Redemption Depicting The Horrors Of The French Revolution

ISBN 9780007350896
Book Condition BRAND NEW
Format PAPERBACK
Publisher HarperCollins Publisher (William Collins)
Publication Date 02 July, 2013
Pages 464
Weight 0.33 kg
Dimension 18 × 11 × 3 cm
Availability: 1 in stock

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1 in stock

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Description

HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics.
 
A Tale of Two Cities, published in 1859, is a historical drama written by Charles Dickens. The backdrop of the novel takes place in London and Paris prior to the French Revolution. The novel, told in three parts, has been adapted into numerous productions for film, theater, radio, and television.
 
‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…’
 
Set before and during the French Revolution in the cities of Paris and London, A Tale of Two Cities tells the story of Dr Manette’s release from imprisonment in the Bastille and his reunion with daughter, Lucie. A French aristocrat Darnay and English lawyer Carton compete in their love for Lucie and the ensuing tale plays out against the menacing backdrop of the French Revolution and the shadow of the guillotine.


The story is primarily follows the lives of several characters, including Charles Darnay, a French aristocrat who renounces his title and moves to England; Sydney Carton, a drunken lawyer who bears a striking resemblance to Darnay; and Lucie Manette, a young Frenchwoman who is reunited with her father after he is released from imprisonment in the Bastille.
 
Over the next several months, Darnay and Carton pay several visits to the Manettes at their London home; both men fall in love with Lucie, but where Darnay is hardworking, courteous, and noble, Carton is a cynical and depressed alcoholic. Darnay and Lucie eventually become engaged, while Carton, in confessing his love for Lucie, swears that he would give his life to keep her and those she loves safe.
 
Meanwhile, change is underway in France. Shortly after his trial, Darnay had visited his uncle, who is revealed to be a corrupt and cruel nobleman: the Marquis St. Evrémonde. On the night of Darnay’s visit, however, the Marquis was killed by the father of a peasant boy he had run over with his carriage earlier that day. The man—Gaspard—is arrested and executed, but the events surrounding the murder generate further interest in a revolutionary society headed by Defarge and his wife Thérèse.
 
Darnay and Lucie marry, with Doctor Manette’s permission, although Manette suffers a brief relapse after learning Darnay’s true name. Several years pass in domestic bliss, and Darnay and Lucie have a daughter (also named Lucie). By the time the child is 6 events have come to a head in France; led by the Defarges, the French peasantry storm the Bastille and execute its guards. More violence quickly follows, with the killing of a government official and the arson of the Marquis’s former mansion.
 
Three years after the French Revolution begins, Darnay receives a letter from a man named Gabelle, whom he had entrusted with the disposal of the Evrémonde property after Darnay himself renounced it. Gabelle is now accused of aiding an “emigrant”—an aristocrat who has fled France—and asks Darnay to come to Paris and speak for him. Darnay, trusting in his record of sympathy with the French peasantry, agrees. When he arrives in Paris, however, he is arrested and placed in La Force prison.
 
Lucie and Doctor Manette quickly follow Darnay to France; Manette’s imprisonment under the French monarchy has made him a national celebrity there, and he hopes to use this public sympathy to secure Darnay’s release. Even as France descends deeper into violence, it appears that Manette may be successful; a little over a year after his initial arrest, Darnay appears in court, and Manette’s testimony on his behalf secures his acquittal.
 
Later that night, however, Darnay is re-arrested. At his trial the next day, a statement written by Manette during his imprisonment is read aloud: it describes how Manette was imprisoned by Darnay’s uncle and father because he had treated (and consequently knew about) a young peasant woman raped by one of the Evrémonde brothers, and a boy (her brother) who was fatally injured trying to defend her. These two victims of the Evrémondes were Madame Defarge’s older siblings, and their deaths are what have made her so bitter and vengeful.
 
Darnay is sentenced to death, and even Manette proves powerless to save him; his attempts to speak to those in power only cause him to relapse into his traumatized state. In the meantime, however, Carton has arrived in Paris and devised a plan. Carton instructs Lorry (in Paris attending to his bank’s business) to ensure that Lucie, her father, and her child leave France the day of the execution; Madame Defarge will seek revenge on the rest of Darnay’s family next. He also entrusts his own travel papers to Lorry.
 
Carton successfully blackmails one of Darnay’s jailers (whom he knows to be an English spy) into allowing him to see Darnay. Once inside the cell, he drugs Darnay and takes his place, while Darnay himself, in the guise of Carton, leaves Paris with his family and Lorry. Belatedly, Madame Defarge arrives at the Manettes’ former Paris residence hoping to find and arrest Lucie, only to be killed in a struggle with Miss Pross, Lucie’s devoted maid. Meanwhile, Carton is taken to the guillotine in Darnay’s place. After comforting a young seamstress condemned alongside him, Carton mounts the scaffold, finally at peace with himself and his life.
 
The novel explores themes of love, sacrifice, violence, and redemption. It depicts the horrors of the French Revolution and the ways in which ordinary people are caught up in historical events beyond their control. The novel’s famous opening lines, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” capture the contrasts and conflicts of this tumultuous period in history.
 
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About the Author :
 
Charles Dickens was born in 1812 and grew up in poverty. This experience influenced ‘Oliver Twist’, the second of his fourteen major novels, which first appeared in 1837. When he died in 1870, he was buried in Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey as an indication of his huge popularity as a novelist, which endures to this day.
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