#Atotc

[sydney-carton-of-sour-milk]

these are my friends

see how they glisten

(porcelain figurines of Sydney Carton from 1940s Japan)

#see this one shine how he smiles in the light etc. #Sydney Carton #A Tale of Two Cities #AToTC #dickens #classic literature #memorabilia #vintage #antiques #doing these png edits is very fun i must say #kind of time-consuming but a much more fun way to post about these vintage items #also such a great way of showcasing all the variations!! which is a good chunk of the intrigue for me #and by the way #we are actually now almost completely through my memorabilia archives... #gonna try to find a few more at some point to pad the way through most of the rest of 2023 #so that in 2024 i can start posting that new genre of post that i was talking about👁️👄👁️

[blebbloom]

getting executed in an hour and a friend has dropped in to visit me in prison! for some reason, he really wants us to swap outfits before i go to the guillotine, haha. just normal guy things, i guess ^^

#a tale of two cities #atotc #charles darnay #sydney carton

[hore4women]

Obi-Wan: What did you do?

Anakin: …

Obi-Wan: WHAT DID YOU DO?!

Anakin, shamefully puts his head down: Married Padmé on accident…

Padmé: ACCIDENT?! YOU BEGGED ME FIRST.

#atotc #star wars #clone wars #anakin skywalker #obi wan kenobi #anakin padme meme #star wars incorrect quotes #anakin cannot keep a simple fucking secret #the clone wars #501st

[comma-after-dearest]

Does anyone think a lot about Charles Darnay’s inevitable post-novel PTSD/survivor guilt or is that just me?

#a tale of two cities #atotc #charles darnay #i have a lot of feelings about this please help

[1-800-disasterbi]

Wake up babes new blorbo just dropped

#sydney carton #atotc #a tale of two cities #fanart #my art for once #Dickens #charles dickens #classical literature

[incorrectatotcquotes]

Cruncher: Do dragons fart fire?

Sydney: I don't know.

Cruncher: I thought you went to university.

#source: tumblr #a tale of two cities #atotc #dickensian #booklr #incorrect a tale of two cities #books and literature #charles dickens #english lit #incorrect quotes #incorrect dickens #classic lit #classic literature #lit #literary memes #bibliophile #books and libraries #old books #books #booklover #victorian literature #book blog #bookaddict #bookaholic #bookworm #i am back my dudes

[icantrecallaskysoclear]

“...I thank you, Darnay. I may use that freedom with your name?" "I think so, Carton, by this time."

. . .

#ATOTC #a tale of two cities the musical #ATOTC on PBS #a tale of two cities #book quote #charles darnay #sydney carton #Sydney & Charles #atotcedit #gifs made by me #the queque is upon us #bros #theatre bros #theatreedit #jill santoriello #james barbour #simon thomas #I really like how sydney and charles' relationship grows #they start out as rivals but by the end of the show they genuinely care for and value one another #heck Charles even asks Carton to take care of Lucie because he trusts him to make her happy #I wanted to make a longer gifset showcasing Sydney and Charles' friendship but the PBS concert doesn't have many scenes with them :-(

[eleftherian]

sydney carton had severe depression and alcoholism and like i cant find ANY articles on it??? friends & fiends alike if you have any articles drop that pdf pls im begging

#my posts #dickensian nonsense #charles dickens #ATOTC #a tale of two cities #sydney carton

[robertsmithclone]

my a tale of two cities bias is sydney carton

#mj’s bs #atotc #a tale of two cities #sydney carton

[jobrker]

where is my charles darnay love in the tags

#he is a sweet boy! who's kind of dumb! but a sweet sweet boy!!! #him and lucie are not getting nearly enough love i am seeing #shut up fleur #charles darnay #tale of two cities #atotc

[jonquilandlace]

A Tale of Two Cities got brought up again time to revive my favorite fact that when my high school class read it we referred to Madame Defarge's knitting holding people's names to kill as The Knit List

#a tale of two cities #charles dickens #madame defarge #the knit list #atotc #dickens #classics #classic lit #classic literature #literature #novel #book #humor #college humor #high school humor #high school #college

[sydney-carton-of-sour-milk]

The Many Illustrators of A Tale of Two Cities 1: Hablot Knight Browne (a.k.a. Phiz)

...& a century-and-a-half-long game of telephone...

For the first post in a series on the book's illustrators, how could we start with any but the very first one?

"Although a number of critics have pilloried Hablot Knight Browne ('Phiz') for his supposed ineptitude in the program of illustration for A Tale of Two Cities, the fact that he so astutely realized and graphically elaborated so many significant elements of Dickens's letterpress is evidence that his pictorial series reflects an extremely careful reading of the printed text...The visual accompaniment [that these illustrations provided to the novel's monthly installments] was not mere ornamentation, but an aide-mémoire intended to facilitate the monthly reader's keeping track of a discontinuous narrative over a period of seven months."

from "Charles Dickens's "A Tale of Two Cities" (1859) Illustrated: A Critical Reassessment of Hablot Knight Browne's Accompanying Plates" by Philip V. Allingham from the 2003 volume of the journal Dickens Studies Annual.

Frontispiece Cover to the Monthly Installments Vignette

For some perspective on the significance of this first set of illustrations - published initially within monthly installments of the novel in 1859 (the text of which was collected from the original weekly installments published in All the Year Round, also in 1859) - that single quote comes from an entire article on these illustrations that is itself 49 pages long.

The Mail

As such, suffice it to say that this particular post will not be a thorough examination of the history, context, and impact of these illustrations (though, for those interested, be sure to click on any links you see throughout this post for all sorts of further reading!).

The Shoemaker

Instead, it will simply be a place to observe and appreciate these illustrations for what they are, in their "original" glory.

The Likeness

...I mean, just look at these things! (I'm of course gonna break formality after this one because it's my favorite😌)

Congratulations

In terms of the odyssey of finding the proper edition of these to post, "original" is the operative word.

The Stoppage at the Fountain

These are the oldest (except for some or possibly all of McLenan's...more on that many months from now though) and certainly the most iconic of the illustrations of this novel and thus have also had the most mileage, having been passed from edition to edition to edition countless times over the last 164 years.

Mr. Stryver at Tellson's Bank

That means - as the gif at the top of this post demonstrates - that these illustrations have slowly been "translated" over time into dozens of distinct images - in ways as innocuous as a change in a shadow and as striking as a change in a character's facial expression.

The Spy's Funeral

These translations have happened in all sorts of ways over the development of printing technology - blemishes, xeroxing errors, low-quality or blurry scans, too much ink being used in printing, image compression, sometimes even actual tracing of the original illustrations! - and as interesting as they can be on their own, for someone determined to find the most accurate representation of Phiz's phenomenal work, they can be...phrustrating.

The Wine-shop

In fact, as a sidebar, the illustrations that I used for the Best Character Showdown bracket turned out to themselves be traces and not originals! I am Ashamed and disheartened! You could even say that I am yet another...

The Accomplices

accomplice in the mistranslation of Phiz's work!

The Sea Rises

Rest assured, though - although they are not from the monthly installments themselves (which as far as my research has gone do not seem to be anywhere on the Internet), these particular scans are sourced directly from an online scan at the Open Library project (contained within the Internet Archive) of the first edition of A Tale of Two Cities, itself also published in 1859.

Before the Prison Tribunal

I do wish that they hadn't been cropped the way that they have and that they were available in a (much) higher resolution, but as of now, they're the best representation of Phiz's original work that we netizens have!

The Knock at the Door

A Tale of Two Cities was the final novel that Phiz illustrated for Dickens - and marked the complicated ending to a twenty-three-year (yes) professional partnership between the author and illustrator - but his work here will mark a beautiful beginning to the long archiving project we will experience together here on this blog.

The Double Recognition

Throughout the work of this project, there will be quite a variety of sources being used - from direct scans by me to the two-tone abstractions of PDFs clearly not created for the purpose of storing image information - depending on the needs and availability of each edition.

After the Sentence

All of it goes to show the importance of accuracy and attention to detail in archiving art, which is itself an art form to be appreciated.

Hope you've enjoyed!

& the standard endnote for all posts in this series:

This post is intended to act as the start of a forum on the given illustrator, so if anyone has anything to add - requests to see certain drawings in higher definition (since Tumblr compresses images), corrections to factual errors, sources for better-quality versions of the illustrations, further reading, fun facts, any questions, or just general commentary - simply do so on this post, be it in a comment/tags or the replies!💫

#A Tale of Two Cities #AToTC #classic literature #victorian literature #dickens #charles dickens #engraving #illustration #illustrators #Phiz #Hablot Knight Browne #1850s #HOUUGHHHAGHGUHGGHHHHOUHGHHOUHGHHGAHGHSGHGHGH #how long have i been working on this today? has it been eight hours? #well? how did I get here? #again most of them won't even remotely be like this #but it's phiz! i gotta do phiz right! #also for the record: for the first gif I made all eight variations grayscale and modified their contrast #and for the second gif I sepia-toned and modified the contrast of one of the illustrations #all for the sake of readability and reducing flashing!

[therevengeoffrankenstein]

alexandre manette thee drug addiction allegory thee ocd allegory thee trauma allegory thee ptsd allegory thee ALLEGORY !

#myevilposts #atotc #i'm obsessed with him 😭 #STILL !!!!!!!!!!!!!!! #he's soooo good. #they fucking went there and honestly i am obsessed. he's just like me for real.

[poquito-burrito]

“sadly, sadly, the sun rose; it rose upon no sadder sight than the man of good abilities and good emotions, incapable of their directed exercise, incapable of his own help and his own happiness, sensible of the blight on him, and resigning himself to let it eat him away.”

A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens

#a tale of two cities #atotc #charles dickens #sydney carton #quote #books

[comma-after-dearest]

Broke: Darnay and Carton speak English to each other

Woke: Darnay and Carton speak to each other in their own languages (aka they have bilingual conversations)

Bespoke: Darnay and Carton speak to each other in their own brand of Franglish that only they can understand

#a tale of two cities #atotc #sydney carton #charles darnay

[kefalion]

Your art looks so soft and so comforting omg,,the colors, the...the everything!!!!

That’s so sweet to say. Thank you,

I’m supposing this is about the Padmé and Anakin paining?

Let’s give you all another in progress image to looks at

#fanart #star wars #wip art #anidala #kefalion’s asks #kefalion’s art #anakin skywalker #padme anidala #atotc #I’m rewatching attack of the clones and drawing atm. If Anakin wasn’t so pretty this film would have gone a different way #he’s so creepy #or intense if I’m to be generous #but also #I get Padmé #when he’s laughing it’s easy to forget #and she thinks his support of a dictatorship is him teasing her #if only