This Prestwick House Literary Touchstone Edition? includes a glossary and reader's notes to help the modern reader contend with Dickens's complex approach to the human condition.Set against the backdrop of the French Revolution, A Tale of Two Cities remains one of Western literature's most powerful stories of sacrificial love, redemption, and the devastation spread by obsessive justice. Having fled Paris for the relative safety and security of London, Dr. Manette, his daughter Lucie, and Charles Darnay are irresistibly lured into a whirlwind of events that threaten to shatter their lives'until a hopeless drunkard remembers the promise he once made to the only woman he ever loved. Dickens originally published A Tale of Two Cities in weekly installments, ensuring that his readers would return to read each new segment. The collected chapters have continued to excite and move readers for over a century.

Prestwick House is proud to offer our Spotlight Editions? ? thoughtful, intelligent adaptations of some of the world's greatest literature. Each Spotlight -Edition? maintains the rich integrity of the original work while adapting the language to be more accessible to the average high school student.In addition to providing a more readable text, Prestwick House Spotlight Editions? are enhanced, providing your students with? thoughtful guided reading questions and margin notes to help students -navigate the text;? suggestions for thought and discussion;? research opportunities for richer understanding of the text and its contexts;? suggested writing activities to foster deeper thinking.

The grim tale of the people who were caught up in the wave of violence and murder which marked the French Revolution.

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness…” A Tale of Two Cities is a novel set in London and Paris before and during the French Revolution. The novel depicts the plight of the French peasantry demoralized by the French aristocracy in the years leading up to the revolution, the corresponding brutality demonstrated by the revolutionaries toward the former aristocrats in the early years of the revolution, and many unflattering social parallels with life in London during the same period. Charles Dickens (1812-1870) was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era. His works enjoyed unprecedented popularity during his lifetime, and by the twentieth century critics and scholars had recognized him as a literary genius. His novels and short stories enjoy lasting popularity.

The original CliffsNotes study guides offer expert commentary on major themes, plots, characters, literary devices, and historical background. The latest generation of titles in this series also feature glossaries and visual elements that complement the classic, familiar format. In CliffsNotes on A Tale of Two Cities, you experience one of Charles Dickens's most important works as he recounts the horrors of the French Revolution in what amounts to a cautionary tale warning of the possibility of revolution in 18th-century England. From its first line ("It was the best of times, it was the worst of times") to its last ("It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known"), Dickens's novel of revolution, sacrifice, and redemption continues to captivate modern imaginations. Chapter summaries and commentaries lead you through Dickens's "Tale," and critical essays give you insight into the women of A Tale of Two Cities and the French Revolution. Other features that help you study include Character analyses of the main characters A character map that graphically illustrates the relationships among the characters A section on the life and background of Charles Dickens A review section that tests your knowledge A Resource Center full of books, articles, films, and Internet sites Classic literature or modern-day treasure—you'll understand it all with expert information and insight from CliffsNotes study guides.

A Victorian classic, Brontë's story about a strong yet poor woman forging her path through life in the English countryside is firmly established in the literary canon. Part romance, part mystery, part Gothic tale, this novel possesses not only a page-turn