A Tale of Two Cities

A Tale of Two Cities quickly establishes itself with one of literature’s most legendary opening lines:

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…”

With these famous words, Dickens plunges the reader into one of history’s most explosive eras – the French Revolution. The two cities are Paris and London, and between them rumble conspiracy, intrigue, and the heavy traffic of countless spies. From the storming of the Bastille to the relentless drop of the guillotine, Dickens vividly captures the upheaval of the tumultuous, terror-steeped days of 1789.

At the center of it all is the novel’s hero, Sydney Carton, a lazy, alcholic – but honorable – attorney who is in love with Lucie Manette, a beautiful woman brought up in London. When Lucie marries Charles Darnay, a man condemned to death for his ties to the aristocratic Evrémonde family, Carton makes the supreme sacrifice on the bloodstained streets of Paris.

In this rousing historical romance, Dickens exposes his severe distaste of the excess of police states, the ease with which citizens resort to mob violence, and aristocratic tyrants, whose livlihood is predicated upon unfeeling notions such as “Vengeance and retribution require a long time; it is the rule.” A stirring classic of love, revenge, and resurrenction, A Tale of Two Cities remains one of Dickens’s most exciting novels.

Gillen D’Arcy Wood received his Ph.D in English from Columbia University in 2000 and is currently an assistant professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He is the author of The Shock of the Real: Romanticism and Visual Culture, 1760-1860.