书名：A Tale of Two Cities (The Penguin English Library)双城记

难度：Lexile蓝思阅读指数790L
作者：Charles Dickens查尔斯·狄更斯
出版社名称：Penguin Classics
出版时间：2012
语种：英文
ISBN：9780141199702
商品尺寸：12.9 x 2.1 x 19.8 cm
包装：平装
页数：480

A Tale of Two Cities《双城记》是英国作家查尔斯·狄更斯所著的一部以法国大革命为背景所写成的长篇历史小说。故事中将巴黎、伦敦两个大城市连结起来，围绕着曼马内特医生一家和以德发日夫妇为首的圣安东尼区展开故事。小说里描写了贵族如何败坏、如何残害百姓，人民心中积压对贵族的刻骨仇恨，导致了不可避免的法国大革命。书名中的“双城”指的是巴黎与伦敦。
本书为企鹅经典所推出的Penguin English Library英文原版，由George Woodcock主编，内容精准完整无删减。

The Penguin English Library Edition of A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

“Liberty, equality, fraternity, or death;—the last, much the easiest to bestow, O Guillotine!”

Described by Dickens as “the best story I have written”, A Tale of Two Cities interweaves thrilling historical drama with heartbreaking personal tragedy. It vividly depicts a revolutionary Paris running red with blood, and a London where the poor starve. In the midst of the chaos two men—an exiled French aristocrat and a dissolute English lawyer—are both redeemed and condemned by their love for the same woman, as the shadow of La Guillotine draws closer...

The Penguin English Library—100 editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century and the very first novels to the beginning of the First World War.
Book the First: Recalled to Life

  1. The Period
  2. The Mail
  3. The Night Shadows
  4. The Preparation
  5. The Wine-Shop
  6. The Shoemaker

Book the Second: The Golden Thread
  1. Five Years Later
  2. A Sight
  3. A Disappointment
  4. Congratulatory
  5. The Jackal
  6. Hundreds of People
  7. Monseigneur in Town
  8. Monseigneur in the Country
  9. The Gorgon’s Head
  10. Two Promises
  11. A Companion Picture
  12. The Fellow of Delicacy
  13. The Fellow of No Delicacy
  14. The Honest Tradesman
  15. Knitting
  16. Still Knitting
  17. One Night
  18. Nine Days
  19. An Opinion
  20. A Plea
  21. Echoing Footsteps
  22. The Sea Still Rises
  23. Fire Rises
  24. Drawn to the Lodestone Rock

Book the Third: The Track of a Storm
  1. In Secret
  2. The Grindstone
  3. The Shadow
  4. Calm in a Storm
  5. The Wood-Sawyer
  6. Triumph
  7. A Knock at the Door
  8. A Hand at Cards
  9. The Game Made
  10. The Substance of the Shadow
  11. Dusk
  12. Darkness
  13. Fifty-Two
  14. The Knitting Done
  15. The Footsteps Die Out for Ever

 “A Tale of Two Cities” by George Woodcock
查尔斯·狄更斯（Charles Dickens，1812～1870），1812年生于英国的朴次茅斯。15岁时，狄更斯在一家律师事务所当抄写员并学习速记，此后，又在报社任新闻记者。在《记事晨报》任记者时，狄更斯开始发表一些具有讽刺和幽默内容的短剧，主要反映伦敦的生活，逐渐有了名气。他了解城市底层人民的生活和风土人情，这些都体现在他热情洋溢的笔端。此后，他在不同的杂志社任编辑、主编和发行人，其间发表了几十部长篇和短篇小说，主要作品有The Pickwick Papers《匹克威克外传》、Oliver Twist《雾都孤儿》、The Old Curiosity Shop《老古玩店》、Hard Times《艰难时世》、Our Mutual Friend《我们共同的朋友》、A Tale of Two Cities《双城记》等。

Charles Dickens (1812-70) had his first, astounding success with his first novel The Pickwick Papers and never looked back. In an extraordinarily full life he wrote, campaigned and spoke on a huge range of issues, and was involved in many of the key aspects of Victorian life, by turns cajoling, moving and irritating. He completed fourteen full-length novels and volume after volume of journalism. His thirteenth novel, A Tale of Two Cities is one of his most famous works.
The Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby, The Old Curiosity Shop, Barnaby Rudge, A Christmas Carol, Martin Chuzzlewit, Dombey and Son, David Copperfield, Bleak House, Hard Times, Little Dorrit, Great Expectations, Our Mutual Friend and The Mystery of Edwin Drood are also published in the Penguin English Library.
The Period

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way--in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.
There were a king with a large jaw, and a queen with a plain face, on the throne of England; there were a king with a large jaw, and a queen with a fair face, on the throne of France. In both countries it was clearer than crystal to the lords of the State preserves of loaves and fishes, that things in general were settled for ever.
It was the year of Our Lord one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five. Spiritual revelations were conceded to England at that favoured period, as at this. Mrs. Southcott had recently attained her five-and-twentieth blessed birthday, of whom a prophetic private in the Life Guards had heralded the sublime appearance by announcing that arrangements were made for the swallowing up of London and Westminster. Even the Cock-lane ghost had been laid only a round dozen of years, after rapping out its messages, as the spirits of this very year last past (supernaturally deficient in originality) rapped out theirs. Mere messages in the earthly order of events had lately come to the English Crown and People, from a congress of British subjects in America: which, strange to relate, have proved more important to the human race than any communications yet received through any of the chickens of the Cock-lane brood.
France, less favoured on the whole as to matters spiritual than her sister of the shield and trident, rolled with exceeding smoothness down hill, making paper money and spending it. Under the guidance of her Christian pastors, she entertained herself, besides, with such humane achievements as sentencing a youth to have his hands cut off, his tongue torn out with pincers, and his body burned alive, because he had not kneeled down in the rain to do honour to a dirty procession of monks which passed within his view, at a distance of some fifty or sixty yards. It is likely enough that, rooted in the woods of France and Norway, there were growing trees, when that suffer was put to death, already marked by the Woodman, Fate, to come down and be sawn into boards, to make a certain movable framework with a sack and a knife in it, terrible in history. It is likely enough that in the rough outhouses of some tillers of the heavy lands adjacent to Paris, there were sheltered from the weather that very day, rude carts, bespattered with rustic mire, snuffed about by pigs, and roosted in by poultry, which the Farmer, Death, had already set apart to be his tumbrils of the Revolution. But that Woodman and that Farmer, though they work unceasingly, work silently, and no one heard them as they went about with muffled tread: the rather, forasmuch as to entertain any suspicion that they were awake, was to be atheistical and traitorous.