Synopsis
Dickens's one serious, un-comic novel, A TALE OF TWO CITIES, is set during the French Revolution and tells a story of unselfish devotion--one of Dickens's most beloved works despite its sober subject matter. It is also, with BARNABY RUDGE, one of his only two historical novels. GREAT EXPECTATIONS, Dickens's tale of the orphan, Pip, and his mysterious benefactor, provides a grotesque but pointed comedy that explores the many levels of English society with insight and sympathy as well as a satiric eye. In HARD TIMES, the daughter of a circus performer, abandoned by her father, is adopted by the coldhearted Thomas Gradgrind, whose own children have been reared in a bleak and loveless household and whose lives threaten to be ruined accordingly. A parallel story involves an honest millworker town between his drunken wife and a sympathetic fellow worker at the mill; eventually, he is executed for a crime committed by Gradgrind. HARD TIMES is one of Dickens's typical novels, in which natural, loving, and warmhearted characters like the circus folk are contrasted with those who are pragmatic and ruthless, like Gradgrind.
Dickens's second novel, OLIVER TWIST, the story of an orphan who flees the workhouse only to fall in with a gang of thieves and prostitutes in London's sleazy underworld, was a trenchant criticism of England's poor laws. Enacted in the 1830s, these laws provided assistance for the poor only through workhouses, which were deliberately squalid and miserable to encourage the poor--who were considered lazy and immoral--to better themselves and get out. The inequities between rich and poor were one of Dickens's constant themes, and with OLIVER TWIST he established himself as a staunch champion of the downtrodden, particularly children. The novel also, however, has its cheerful moments, and contains some of Dickens's most colorful characters, including Fagin, the Artful Dodger, the evil Bill Sykes, and the unfortunate Nancy. Dickens's one serious, un-comic novel, A TALE OF TWO CITIES, is set during the French Revolution and tells a story of unselfish devotion. The beautiful Lucy Manette marries Charles Darnay, the descendant of an aristocratic French family denounced by the revolutionaries, among whom are the memorably evil and fanatical Mme. Defarge. When Darnay is arrested and condemned to death, his place is taken at the guillotine by Sidney Carton, who loves Lucy himself and is willing to die to secure her happiness (and who happens to resemble Darnay). His last words--"'Tis a far, far better thing that I do than I have ever done..."--have become nearly as famous as the novel itself, one of Dickens's most beloved works despite its sober subject matter. It is also, with BARNABY RUDGE, one of his only two historical novels.
| Details | | Publication Date: | 1991-03-01 | | Edition Description: | Unabridged |
| Size | | Height: | 9.3 in | | Width: | 6.5 in | | Thickness: | 1.8 in | | Weight: | 37.6 oz |
Publisher's Note
Four literary classics; 'Great Expectations', 'Hard Times', 'A Christmas Carol', and 'A Tale of Two Cities'. The four books collected here reveal much of Dicken's development as a novelist. His early works lampooned the abuses of society, but with a confidence that they could be overcome with goodwill and common sense. In his later novels he had become a penetrating social critic, analyzing the materialism and greed of his age in long, complicated panoramas that no longer offered solution that depended on a triumph of human nature.
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