Audiobook · read by volunteers
À Tale of Two Cities
Charles Dickens (1812–1870)
Read by Michael Sirois, Kara Shallenberg (1969-2023), Chip, Andy Minter (1934-2017), Jamey Osborne, Zale Schafer (Rose May Chamberlin Memorial Foundat, Tora, Kristin LeMoine, Nocturna, Susan Denney · 45 chapters · 14 h 59
About the book
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. With these famous words Charles Dickens opens A Tale of Two Cities, a novel set in London and Paris in the years leading up to and through the French Revolution. Its story follows two men, Charles Darnay and Sydney Carton, whose lives are bound together by a woman, by a secret from the past and by the terrible momentum of history. Dickens explores guilt, shame, redemption and loyalty, and he stages some of his most striking scenes, from a wine cask breaking in a Paris street to the shadows of the guillotine. Michael Sirois, Kara Shallenberg, Chip and seven other LibriVox volunteers read the forty-five chapters in about fifteen hours.
Introduction
Charles Dickens (1812-1870) was the most popular English novelist of the Victorian age. A Tale of Two Cities appeared in 1859, serialised in weekly parts in his magazine All the Year Round. It is one of only two historical novels he wrote, and it has remained among his best-known and most widely read books, in part because of its famous opening and closing lines.
The story is set in the late eighteenth century, with the action moving between England and France. Dickens drew on Thomas Carlyle's history of the Revolution for his background and used it to examine themes that concerned him throughout his career: injustice, social division, the dangers of violence and the possibility of sacrifice. The book is more compact than most of his novels, and its plot is tightly constructed, with echoes and repetitions that build toward its dramatic ending.
This recording has forty-five chapters and lasts about fifteen hours. It is read by a team of LibriVox volunteers, including Michael Sirois, Kara Shallenberg and Chip, giving the novel's large cast a variety of voices. It is an excellent choice for a long listening project, whether you are encountering Dickens for the first time or returning to a favourite. The tale has lost none of its power to move, and its picture of a society on the brink of upheaval is as gripping now as it was in the 1850s.
Public domain
Charles Dickens died in 1870: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text