A Tale of Two Cities

A Tale of Two Cities is a historical novel written by Charles Dickens and first published in 1859. The two cities referred to in the title are London and Paris in the context of the French Revolution.

Jarvis Lorry, an employee of Tellson’s Bank, learns that Dr. Alexandre Manette has been released from the Bastille after eighteen years of imprisonment. Years earlier, Lorry had brought Manette’s daughter, Lucie, to England after the doctor disappeared and was presumed dead. He now tells Lucie that her father is alive, and they travel to France to bring him home.

The action moves between London and Paris as the lives of Lucie, Charles Darnay, and Sydney Carton become entangled with the poverty and political unrest that culminate in the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror.

Among Dickens’s darker works, the novel examines injustice, imprisonment, sacrifice, and revolutionary violence. It portrays the social conditions that helped produce the fall of the French aristocracy and a period of profound political change in France and beyond.

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way..."