The next fortnightly book will be Charles Dickens's famous novel, Buried Alive. Actually, it's A Tale of Two Cities, but Buried Alive was one of the titles he considered for it. He considered a lot of titles for it, including The Leaves of the Forest, Round and Round, Rolling Stones, One of these Days, and The Thread of Gold. The book was intended to be a serial for Dickens's new magazine, All the Year Round. He had the idea of relying on Thomas Carlyle's French Revolution, and asked Carlyle if he could send some additional information; Carlyle replied by sending Dickens his entire reference collection on the subject. By all accounts Dickens read it all, making this perhaps the first thoroughly researched historical novel.
I'll be reading it in an edition from 1938 put out by Heritage Press (New York). It is illustrated by Rene ben Sussan, who also illustrated Eugénie Grandet. It is printed in Baskerville type.
