'A Tale of Two Cities, The Companion Edition' Presents Dickens's Novel in Its 1859 First Book Edition Text, with His Own Preface Restored and Eight of Phiz's Sixteen Plates

NEW YORK, Oct. 30, 2026, In the spring of 1859 Charles Dickens broke with his publishers, founded a new journal, *All the Year Round*, and launched it with the opening chapters of a short, fierce historical novel he had conceived while acting in Wilkie Collins's *The Frozen Deep*. *A Tale of Two Cities* ran in weekly parts from 30 April to 26 November 1859, and Chapman & Hall published it in book form the same year, illustrated by Hablot Knight Browne, "Phiz." A new Companion Classics edition, A Tale of Two Cities, The Companion Edition, presents the complete novel, 135,421 words, forty-five chapters in three books, unabridged, in the text of that first book edition, taken from Project Gutenberg eBook #98 and collated token-by-token against a scan of the 1859 printing. Two pieces of front matter the Gutenberg transcription omits are restored from the 1859 edition: Dickens's own Preface, his account of the novel's conception and of his debt to Carlyle's *French Revolution*, and his inscription of the tale to Lord John Russell.

The novel of the two cities is here in the words Dickens published: a physician recalled to life after eighteen years in the Bastille; his daughter, the golden thread of the second book's title; a Frenchman who has renounced his name; the wasted English lawyer who is his double; a bank clerk, a wine-shop, and a woman knitting a register of names in Saint Antoine, while across the Channel the sea of revolution rises toward the Terror. Eight of the sixteen designs in the first edition's List of Plates are restored from the 1859 printing and placed at the chapters they illustrate: the Frontispiece, The Likeness, The Stoppage at the Fountain, Mr. Stryver at Tellson's Bank, The Spy's Funeral, The Sea Rises, Before the Prison Tribunal, and The Knock at the Door. The edition's provenance note names the eight designs that could not be restored from that copy, the Vignette and seven plates whose leaves are blank in it, rather than claiming completeness it does not have. This edition likewise states no total-sales figure for the novel: the figures repeated in popular accounts are unverified estimates.

Around the novel, the companion material, all of it original to this edition, includes an introduction telling how the book came to be, the Frozen Deep, the debt to Carlyle, the break with his publishers and the serial that carried a new journal; a Who's Who of eighteen entries, from Dr Manette and Sydney Carton to the seamstress and the wood-sawyer; four explainers, covering the French Revolution timeline the novel assumes, the Terror and the guillotine as a working system, Tellson's Bank and the Dover road in coaching-era England, and period money and customs in both countries; a short life of Charles Dickens; a note on the text and the period; a four-meeting reading schedule; and forty discussion questions, spoiler-fenced meeting by meeting, so a book club can take the rising storm in Dickens's own order, and the ending's famous sacrifice arrives, as it should, unspoiled.

Alongside the book, the A Tale of Two Cities, Book Club Kit offers the edition's discussion material as a printable PDF (31 pages, US Letter) for reading groups: a four-meeting reading plan (Book the First; Book the Second in two meetings; Book the Third); the edition's Who's Who and its four explainers in full; all forty discussion questions re-arranged into the four meetings so nobody reads a spoiler before its chapters; and "Spot the Plate," which prints four of Phiz's restored 1859 plates without their captions and challenges readers to find the five hidden details in each, with a full answer key at the back. The kit is available for $7 through the editor's Payhip store.

A Tale of Two Cities, The Companion Edition is available now as an eBook ($9.99) through Payhip, and in The Classics and Companions Shop on the editor's Linktree. Print editions follow on Amazon (paperback, $14.99; hardcover, $24.99). The text and illustrations are public domain worldwide (Charles Dickens died in 1870; H. K. Browne died in 1882); all companion material is original to this edition. This is an independent publication, not affiliated with or endorsed by any Dickens estate, museum, or modern adaptation.

About the editor

Horace Harriott Jr. is a New York-based author and editor of more than two dozen books, including The Side Hustle Handbook, Master Playbook and The Ultimate Commissary Cookbook. This edition is part of his Companion Classics series of reading-together editions of public-domain classics.

About the book

A Tale of Two Cities, The Companion Edition, Charles Dickens (author), Horace Harriott Jr. (editor). Companion Classics, independently published, October 2026. Text: the first book edition (Chapman & Hall, London, 1859), via Project Gutenberg eBook #98, collated against a scan of the 1859 printing; Dickens's Preface and the Lord John Russell inscription restored; three books, forty-five chapters; 135,421 words; eight of Phiz's sixteen listed plates restored (eight named as not restored, in the edition's provenance note); interior proof 551 pages, 6 x 9 in.