A Tale of Two Cities.

DICKENS, Charles.

Item Number: 4410

London: Chapman and Hall, 1860.

First edition, second issue of one of Dickens’ most enduring work. Octavo, bound in full red 19th century morocco, gilt titles and tooling to the spine, front and rear panels, inner dentelles, top edge gilt, marbled endpapers. From the library of stockbroker Henry William Poor, with his bookplates. The firm that he and his father established in 1868, H. V. & H. W. Poor, was a predecessor to the business that eventually became Standard & Poor’s. In near fine condition. With 16 plates by H.K. Browne. A nice example with noted provenance.

The most famous and possibly the most popular of Dickens's novels, A Tale of Two Cities shows a master of dramatic narrative extracting gold from the ore of history. If the bloody tableau of the French Revolution were not in itself sufficient for a dozen novels, Dickens added to it a professional resurrectionist, an authentic ogress, and an antihero as convincingly flawed as any in modern literature. Here, too, are all of Dickens's recurring themes -- imprisonment, injustice, and cataclysmic violence, resurrection and the renunciation that makes renewal possible.