A Tale Of Two Cities

What It's About

Set in London and Paris in the years before and during the French Revolution, this novel follows a handful of lives drawn together by injustice and loyalty. Dr Alexandre Manette is released after eighteen years of wrongful imprisonment in the Bastille and is reunited with his daughter Lucie. Charles Darnay, a French émigré, is put on trial for treason in London, and the case turns on his striking resemblance to Sydney Carton, a brilliant but dissolute English barrister. Both men come to love Lucie. As revolutionary violence takes hold in France, old family secrets and old debts draw the characters back to Paris at the height of the Terror.

Key Concepts

The novel is built on contrasts and doubles: two cities, two kinds of society, and two men who look alike but live very differently. Its central themes are resurrection and the possibility of a second chance, the injustice of a ruling class that ignores the suffering of the poor, and the way cruelty breeds cruelty. Dickens's treatment of the Revolution has drawn mixed responses. He is sharply critical of aristocratic abuse, yet he portrays the revolutionary crowd as a destructive force, and some readers find this one-sided. Critics have also noted that the book is more plot-driven and less humorous than most of his work, with characters who can feel more symbolic than fully rounded. It remains one of the best-selling novels of all time, and its famous opening is among the best-known in English literature.

About the Author

Charles Dickens (1812–1870) was an English novelist and the most popular writer of the Victorian era. His childhood experience of poverty and factory work shaped a lifelong concern with social injustice. He was also a journalist, an editor and a celebrated public performer of his own writing.