Arthur A. Dixon's cover for "A Tale of Two Cities"

Cover for Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities

A. A. Dixon

1905

Watercolour as lithograph

6 ⅛ inches high by 4 inches wide (15.7 cm by 10.1 cm)

Book III, "The Track of a Storm," Ch. 15, "The Footsteps Die out For Ever," 454.

Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.

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

Passage Realised: Sidney Carton, disguised as Charles Darnay, faces execution.

“What I have been thinking as we came along, and what I am still thinking now, as I look into your kind strong face which gives me so much support, is this: — If the Republic really does good to the poor, and they come to be less hungry, and in all ways to suffer less, she may live a long time: she may even live to be old.”

“What then, my gentle sister?”

“Do you think:” the uncomplaining eyes in which there is so much endurance, fill with tears, and the lips part a little more and tremble: “that it will seem long to me, while I wait for her in the better land where I trust both you and I will be mercifully sheltered?”

“It cannot be, my child; there is no Time there, and no trouble there.”

“You comfort me so much! I am so ignorant. Am I to kiss you now? Is the moment come?”

“Yes.”

She kisses his lips; he kisses hers; they solemnly bless each other. The spare hand does not tremble as he releases it; nothing worse than a sweet, bright constancy is in the patient face. She goes next before him — is gone; the knitting-women count Twenty-Two. [Book III, "The Track of a Storm," Ch. 15, "The Footsteps Die out For Ever," pp. 453-454]

Commentary: The Moment of Carton's Triumph on the Scaffold

The large-scale, colour lithograph admirably conveys the high drama of Sydney Carton's self-sacrifice on the scaffold of the guillotine at the Place de la Concorde at the height of the September Massacres in the French Revolution. Dixon uses the realistic modelling of the three figures and urban backdrop to emphasize the central figure, Carton, dressed in clothing of rich fabrics suggestive of the French aristocracy. The sketched-in backdrop of proletarian buildings contrasts the fashionable dress of the victim who through posture and expression ironically dominates the scene of execution, with the shabbily-dressed supporting players, mere functionaries of the state (the executioner, rear, and his assistant, right) whose glum expressions convey no sense of the triumph of the people on this cloudy morning in late eighteenth-century Paris.

Other Illustrated Editions (1859-1910)

Related Material

Bibliography

Dickens, Charles. A Tale of Two Cities. Ilustrated by Hablot Knight Browne. London: Chapman and Hall, 1859.

Dickens, Charles. A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations. Diamond Edition. Illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Junior. Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1867.

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

Dickens, Charles. A Tale of Two Cities. Illustrated by A. A. Dixon with an engraved title by Harry Furniss. London: Collins, 1905. (From the personal collection of George Gorniak, Editor of The Dickens Magazine.)

Dickens, Charles. A Tale of Two Cities, American Notes, and Pictures from Italy. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. Charles Dickens Library Edition. 18 vols. London: Educational Book Company, 1910. Vol. XIII.

Created 2 November 2013

Last updated 25 August 2026