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"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." Many people can recite that line without ever having read the book it opens. That is a pity, because "A Tale of Two Cities" is far more approachable than its reputation as a school classic suggests. It is a historical novel built for suspense, written to be read one weekly installment at a time, and it moves between London and Paris in the years leading up to the French Revolution.
Who wrote it, and when
Charles Dickens was born on 7 February 1812 in Portsmouth, England, and died on 9 June 1870 at Higham, Kent. He is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era, but his beginnings were hard. In 1824 his father was sent to the Marshalsea debtors' prison, and Dickens left school at twelve to work in a boot-blacking factory. That experience of poverty and injustice runs through much of what he later wrote.
By the time he turned to this novel, he was long established. "The Pickwick Papers" had begun appearing in 1836, "Oliver Twist" in 1838, and "A Christmas Carol" in 1843. In 1858 he founded his own weekly magazine, "All the Year Round," and "A Tale of Two Cities" ran in it in 31 weekly installments, from 30 April to 26 November 1859. It was also sold in eight monthly parts with green covers.
Two influences shaped it. Dickens had acted in "The Frozen Deep," a play by his friend Wilkie Collins, and that experience inspired the novel. And Thomas Carlyle's history "The French Revolution" gave him much of the book's rhetoric and imagery. You will often see a claim that the novel has sold 200 million copies; that figure has no reliable source, though the novel is often described as one of the best-selling novels of all time.
The book is divided into three parts: "Recalled to Life," "The Golden Thread," and "The Track of a Storm."
Where the story begins
After an opening chapter that sweeps across England and France in the year 1775, the story narrows to a single night in November. The mail coach from London to Dover is laboring uphill through the mud when a rider comes after it. The messenger, Jerry, carries a short despatch for one of the passengers, Mr. Jarvis Lorry of Tellson's Bank. Lorry reads it and sends back a reply that makes no sense to anyone else: "Recalled to life."
At an inn in Dover, the meaning becomes clear. Lorry meets a young woman, Lucie Manette, and tells her that her father, Doctor Manette, whom she believed dead, is alive. He has spent eighteen years shut away in the Bastille.
Their road leads to the Paris suburb of Saint Antoine, to a wine shop kept by Monsieur Defarge, the doctor's former servant, and his wife. As they arrive, a cask of wine has just smashed in the street, and the hungry neighborhood is on its knees scooping it up. It is a short scene, and an unforgettable picture of a city under strain.
What the reunion of father and daughter will be like, and how two young men who soon enter the story, Charles Darnay, a French aristocrat who has left France for England, and Sydney Carton, a lawyer, will come to be bound up with the Manettes, is for you to find out.
What makes it worth reading
The first pleasure is the structure the title promises. The story keeps crossing the Channel, from the quiet counting-house and courtrooms of London to the restless streets of Paris. Each crossing sharpens the contrast between two cities living through the same years in very different moods.
The second is the crowd. Dickens is famous for vivid individual characters, and there are plenty here, but in this book the people of Paris, acting together, become something like a character of their own. The wine-cask scene is the first taste of that power, and you can feel Carlyle's influence in it.
The third is the serial rhythm. Because the novel was written for weekly publication, chapters tend to end on a question or a hint. Lorry's strange reply on the Dover road is typical: a phrase that means nothing at first and gathers weight as you read. It is a book that rewards a steady pace, a few chapters at a sitting.
One practical tip: the cast is fairly large, so jotting down the main names in the first part will save you some flipping back later.
Who will enjoy it
This is a good choice for readers drawn to the French Revolution as a setting, and for anyone who knows the famous first line and wants to finally meet the story behind it. If "A Christmas Carol" is the only Dickens you have read, this is a natural next step, and a very different side of him: serious, historical, and driven by suspense. It also suits readers who like history told from the level of ordinary people, rather than kings and generals.
Start on the muddy Dover road, hear that strange reply in the dark, and the two cities will take it from there.
Sources
- Wikipedia, "A Tale of Two Cities" (weekly serialization in All the Year Round from 30 April to 26 November 1859 in 31 instalments, the chapters also issued as eight monthly sections in green covers, the three book titles, the opening setup, the influence of Wilkie Collins's The Frozen Deep and Carlyle's The French Revolution, the unsourced "200 million copies" figure) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Tale_of_Two_Cities
- Wikipedia, "Charles Dickens" (birth and death dates and places, the blacking factory at 12, his father in the Marshalsea, publication years of earlier works, public reading tours, All the Year Round 1858-1870) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Dickens
- Project Gutenberg, "A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens" (chapter titles of Book the First, the November 1775 Dover mail, the despatch and the reply "Recalled to life", the wine-cask scene in Saint Antoine, Doctor Manette's shoemaking, the opening words) https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/98
- Shinchosha, "Nito Monogatari" (publisher's description of Charles Darnay as an emigre aristocrat and Sydney Carton as a lawyer) https://www.shinchosha.co.jp/book/203014/