Before You Begin

Before you begin.

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." With those words Charles Dickens opens the most famous historical novel in the English language — a story that swings, chapter by chapter, between the fog-bound counting-houses of London and the seething wine-shops of revolutionary Paris. Between those two cities runs a single golden thread: Lucie Manette, whose love recalls a broken man to life and binds together everyone whose fate this book will decide.

First published in 1859, A Tale of Two Cities is Dickens at the height of his powers, distilling the terror and grandeur of the French Revolution of 1789 into a tale of mistaken identity, buried secrets, and sacrifice. Few writers have matched his gift for crowds and shadows — for the rattle of the mail-coach and the rasp of a shoemaker's knife, for villains as patient as Madame Defarge at her knitting and heroes as unexpected as the idle, wasted Sydney Carton.

The book endures because it asks what a single life is worth, and answers in a way no reader forgets. Generations have carried its closing words in their hearts, and its drama of love set against the guillotine has never lost its power to thrill.

This illustrated edition gathers the novel into six visual movements — recap plates you unlock as you read, each drawing together the cast, the two cities, and the turns of the story so far, with never a glimpse of what lies ahead. Turn the page and step into the streets of London and Paris where these destinies are about to collide.