A Tale of Two Cities :



Novel by Charles Dickens, first published in serial form in 1859 in Dickens’s own periodical All the Year Round. The second of Dickens’s two historical novels (see Barnaby Rudge), A Tale of Two Cities is largely event—rather than character—driven, and its tone is less comic than many of Dickens’s other works.
Set in London and Paris at the time of the French Revolution, the novel is critical both of mob violence and of the aristocratic abuses that prompted the revolution. The story begins with the release of Dr Manette, who has been imprisoned in the Bastille for 18 years. He travels to England to recover his health and his memory, and here his daughter, Lucie, marries Charles Darnay, nephew of the wicked Marquis de St Evremonde who imprisoned Lucie’s father. During the revolution, Darnay travels to Paris to save a faithful servant who has been accused of collusion with the aristocracy. Himself arrested, Darnay is only saved by the intervention of Sydney Carton, a barrister’s reckless son, who is devoted to Lucie. Carton’s remarkable likeness to Darnay enables the latter to escape, and the heroic Carton goes to the guillotine in his place: “It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.”