A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens (best young adult book series .TXT) ๐
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A doctor is released from the Bastille after being falsely imprisoned for almost eighteen years. A young woman discovers the father sheโs never known is not dead but alive, if not entirely well. A young man is acquitted of being a traitor, due in part to the efforts of a rather selfish lout who is assisting the young manโs attorney. A man has a wine shop in Paris with a wife who knits at the bar. These disparate elements are tied together as only Dickens can, and in the process he tells the story of the French Revolution.
Charles Dickens was fascinated by Thomas Carlyleโs magnum opus The French Revolution; according to Dickensโ letters, he read it โ500 timesโ and carried it with him everywhere while he was working on this novel. When he wrote to Carlyle asking him for books to read on background, Carlyle sent him two cartloads full. Dickens mimicked Carlyleโs style, his chronology, and his overall characterization of the revolution; although A Tale of Two Cities is fiction, the historical events described are largely accurate, sometimes exactly so. Even so, Dickens made his name and reputation on telling stories full of characters one could be invested in, care about, and despise, and this novel has all of those and more. It also, in its first and last lines, has two of the most famous lines in literature. With the possible exception of A Christmas Carol, it is his most popular novel, and according to many, his best.
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- Author: Charles Dickens
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โI see the lives for which I lay down my life, peaceful, useful, prosperous and happy, in that England which I shall see no more. I see Her with a child upon her bosom, who bears my name. I see her father, aged and bent, but otherwise restored, and faithful to all men in his healing office, and at peace. I see the good old man, so long their friend, in ten yearsโ time enriching them with all he has, and passing tranquilly to his reward.
โI see that I hold a sanctuary in their hearts, and in the hearts of their descendants, generations hence. I see her, an old woman, weeping for me on the anniversary of this day. I see her and her husband, their course done, lying side by side in their last earthly bed, and I know that each was not more honoured and held sacred in the otherโs soul, than I was in the souls of both.
โI see that child who lay upon her bosom and who bore my name, a man winning his way up in that path of life which once was mine. I see him winning it so well, that my name is made illustrious there by the light of his. I see the blots I threw upon it, faded away. I see him, foremost of just judges and honoured men, bringing a boy of my name, with a forehead that I know and golden hair, to this placeโ โthen fair to look upon, with not a trace of this dayโs disfigurementโ โand I hear him tell the child my story, with a tender and a faltering voice.
โIt 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.โ
ColophonA Tale of Two Cities
was published in 1859 by
Charles Dickens.
This ebook was produced for
Standard Ebooks
by
Vince Rice,
and is based on a transcription produced in 1994 by
Judith Boss and David Widger
for
Project Gutenberg
and on digital scans available at
Google Books.
The cover page is adapted from
Camille Desmoulins au Palais-Royal,
a painting completed in 1888 by
Fรฉlix-Joseph Barrias.
The cover and title pages feature the
League Spartan and Sorts Mill Goudy
typefaces created in 2014 and 2009 by
The League of Moveable Type.
The first edition of this ebook was released on
August 14, 2019, 6:12 p.m.
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