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A Tale of Two Cities

by Charles Dickens

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Bibliography

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  • Ackroyd, Peter. Introduction to Dickens. London: Sinclair Stevenson, 1991.
  • Altick, Richard D. Victorian People and Ideas: A Companion for the Modern Reader of Victorian Literature. New York: Norton, 1973. Extremely useful for background on Dickens's times.
  • Baldridge, Cates. "Alternatives to Bourgeois Individualism in A Tale of Two Cities." In Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900. Vol. 30, Autumn 1990, pp. 633-54. A Marxist reading which sees the book as sympathetic to the collectivist ideology of the Revolution.
  • Beckwith, Charles E., ed. Twentieth Century Interpretations of "A Tale of Two Cities". Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1972. Includes a number of useful critical studies of A Tale of Two Cities.
  • Carlyle, Thomas. The French Revolution: A History, 2 volumes. Boston: Little, Brown, 1838. This work by the famous Victorian author and critic is traditionally credited with providing the inspiration for Dickens's scenes of Revolutionary life in France during the period covered in A Tale of Two Cities.
  • Davis, Earl. "Recalled to Life." In The Flint and the Flame: The Artistry of Charles Dickens. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1963. A useful discussion of the resurrection theme.
  • Dickens, Charles. A Tale of Two Cities. New York: Amsco School Publications, 1971.
  • Dickens, Charles. A Tale of Two Cities. New York: Signet Classic/Penguin Books USA, 1980.
  • Dickens Studies Annual, Vol. 12. Southern Illinois University Press, 1983. A collection of essays ranging across an array of topics about the novel.
  • Drinkwater, John. "The Grand Manner: Thoughts upon A Tale of Two Cities." In Essays of the Year. London: Argonaut, 1929-1930, pp. 3-14. In this essay, Drinkwater examines the manner in which A Tale of Two Cities reveals Dickens's creative talent.
  • Fielding, K. J. "Separation—and A Tale of Two Cities." In Charles Dickens: A Critical Introduction. London: Longmans, Green, 1958, pp. 154-68. A biographical essay that examines the similarities between Dickens's own failing marriage and the separation and loneliness of Dr. Manette.
  • Frank, Lawrence. Charles Dickens and the Romantic Self. University of Nebraska Press, 1974. Sees Darnay, not Carton, as the novel's focus and relates the character to Dickens's life.
  • Frank, Lawrence. "Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities: The Poetics of Impasse." In American Imago, Volume 36 (1979), pp. 215-44; reprinted under the title, "The Poetics of Impasse," in Charles Dickens and the Romantic Self by Lawrence Frank. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984, pp. 124-50. Frank looks at the characters of Sidney Carton and Charles Darnay in A Tale of Two Cities psychoanalytically, seeing Carton as Darnay's doppelganger attempting to bring the Frenchman to awareness of his guilty feelings toward Dr. Manette.
  • Friedman, Barton R. "Antihistory: Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities." In Fabricating History: English Writers on the French Revolution. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988, pp. 145-71. Friedman provides a useful guide to further criticism of Dickens's novel and draws parallels between the work and the genre of the Gothic Romance.
  • Glancy, Ruth F. "A Tale of Two Cities": Dickens's Revolutionary Novel. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1991.
  • Goldberg, Michael. Carlyle and Dickens. University of Georgia Press, 1973. Analyzes the influence of Carlyle and his The French Revolution on Dickens.
  • Herst, Beth F. The Dickens Hero: Selfhood and Alienation in the Dickens World. New York: St. Martin's, 1990.
  • Hobsbaum, Philip. A Reader's Guide to Charles Dickens. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1973.
  • Houston, Gail Turley. Consuming Fictions: Gender, Class and Hunger in Dickens's Novels. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1994.
  • Hutter, Albert D. "Nation and Generation in A Tale of Two Cities." PMLA, Vol. 93, May 1978, pp. 448-62. A psychological reading in which the clash of aristocrats of the ancien regime and the revolutionaries is also a clash of parents and children.
  • Johnson, Edgar. Charles Dickens: His Tragedy and Triumph, 2 vols. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1952. This Book-of-the-Month Club selection has become a standard biography. It includes good critical chapters on all the novels, including A Tale of Two Cities.
  • Jordan, John O., ed. The Cambridge Companion to "A Tale of Two Cities." Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
  • Manheim, Leonard. "A Tale of Two Characters: A Study in Multiple Projection." In Dickens Studies Annual, Vol. I, edited by Robert B. Partlow, Jr. Southern Illinois University Press, pp. 225-27. Relates Darnay and Carton biographically to Dickens, viewing them as projections of Dickens's idealized self.
  • Marlow, James E. Charles Dickens: The Uses of Time. Selinsgrove: Susquehanna University Press, 1994.
  • Miller, J. Hillis. Charles Dickens: The World of His Novels. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1958. A standard book on Dickens's novels. Includes a short but insightful discussion of A Tale of Two Cities.
  • Newlin, George. Understanding "A Tale of Two Cities": A Student Casebook to Issues, Sources and Historical Documents. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1998.
  • Newsom, Robert. Charles Dickens Revisited. New York: Twayne, 2000.
  • Orwell, George. "Charles Dickens." In Dickens, Dali, and Others: Studies in Popular Culture. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovitch, 1946. A classic study of Dickens's novels.
  • Page, Norman. "Introduction." In A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, edited by Norman Page. Rutland: Charles E. Turtle Co., Inc., 1994, pp. xxiii-xxxii.
  • Rem, Tore. Dickens, Melodrama and the Parodic Imagination. New York: AMS Press, 2002.
  • Sanders, Andrew. The Companion to "A Tale of Two Cities." London: Unwin Hyman, 1988.
  • Sanders, Andrew. Dickens and the Spirit of the Age. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999.
  • Sanders, Andrew. Charles Dickens. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.
  • Schlicke, Paul, ed. Oxford Companion to Charles Dickens. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
  • Stephen, Sir James Fitzjames. A Tale of Two Cities. In Saturday Review, December 17, 1859, pp. 741-43; reprinted in The Dickens Critics, edited by George H. Ford and Lauriat Lane, Jr. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1961, pp. 38-46.
  • Wilson, Edmund. "Dickens: The Two Scrooges." In The Wound and the Bow. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1941. An important discussion of Dickens's life as it relates to his novels.

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