A Tale of Two Cities

The storming of the Bastille, the trundling death carts with their doomed human cargo, the chillingly merciless guillotine–this is the frenzied Paris in revolt that Charles Dickens vividly captures in his famous work “A Tale of Two Cities. With passionate eloquence, he brings to life a time of terror and treason, for when the starving French masses rise to overthrow a corrupt and decedent regime, both the guilty and the innocent fall victim to their rage. A masterful portrait of idealism, love and supreme sacrifice–in a Paris alive with revolutionary zeal and a London watching with nervous anticipation, Dickens humanizes the story of the French Revolution with four of his greatest characters: the sinister Madame Defarge, the lovely Lucie Manette and her honorable husband Charles Darnay, and the complex, ultimately heroic Sydney Carton. “A Tale of Two Cities is introduced by H.M. Daleski, formerly President of the International Dickens Society and Chairman of the Department of English at the Hebrew University. He is the author of “Dickens and the Art of Analogy. The Dividend Heroine, Unities: Studies in the English Novel, and other books.