"Title-page with vignette" — second Barnard illustration for "A Tale of Two Cities" (1874)

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Title-page & vignette (1874)

Fred Barnard

Figure, 7.1 cm high by 4.5 cm wide (2 ¾ by 1 ¾ inches); page, 25 cm by 17.5 cm (9 ¾ high by 6 &frac78; inches wide).

Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.

[You may use the image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the person who scanned it and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]

The Passage Realised: The Revolution Sweeps through the Streets of St. Antoine

Instantly Madame Defarge's knife was in her girdle; the drum was beating in the streets, as if it and a drummer had flown together by magic; and The Vengeance, uttering terrific shrieks, and flinging her arms about her head like all the forty Furies at once, was tearing from house to house, rousing the women. [Book the Second, "The Golden Thread," Chapter XXII, "The Sea Still Rises." 102]

Detail of the Title-page Vignette of the Chapman and Hall Household Edition, Vol. VIII (1874)

Commentary: Jacobinism Personified

Title-page vignette, figure of a female Jacobin, either the Vengeance or Madame Defarge, in A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens with twenty-five illustrations by F. Barnard. London: Chapman and Hall, 193 Piccadilly. Vol. VIII (1874).

The figure of a female Jacobin, either the Vengeance or Madame Defarge, who is holding up a blood-dripping dagger, sets the keynote as the wind of violent revolution blows through her hair and garments from left (the past) to right (the future) in Volume VIII of the Household Edition (1872-79). Dickens introduces the personification of poverty-stricken St. Antonine's female Jacobinism, The Vengeance, in Book the Second, Chapter Twenty-Two, "The Sea Still Rises."

Bibliography

Dickens, Charles. The Dickens Souvenir Book. Household Edition. London: Chapman and Hall, 1908. P. 143.

Dickens, Charles. A Tale of Two Cities. Illustrated Fred Barnard. The Household Edition. 22 vols. London: Chapman and Hall, 1874. Vol. VIII.

Created 25 November 2019

Last modified 7 November 2025