A Tale of Two Cities quickly establishes itself with one of literature￯﾿ﾽs 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￯﾿ﾽs most explosive eras￯﾿ﾽthe 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￯﾿ﾽs hero, Sydney Carton, a lazy, alcoholic￯﾿ﾽbut honorable￯﾿ﾽattorney 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 for the excess of police states, the ease with which citizens resort to mob violence, and aristocratic tyrants, whose livelihood of whom 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 resurrection, A Tale of Two Cities remains one of Dickens￯﾿ﾽs most exciting novels.

Features the original illustrations by Phiz
￯﾿ﾽ

Introduction and Notes by Gillen D￯﾿ﾽArcy Wood
Having earned his Ph.D. from Columbia University in 2000, Gillen D￯﾿ﾽArcy Wood is now Assistant Professor of English at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He is a Fulbright Scholar and the recipient of multiple Mellon Fellowships and other awards. He is the author of The Shock of the Real: Romanticism and Visual Culture, 1760￯﾿ﾽ1860 (2001), as well as numerous articles and reviews on nineteenth-century British and French literature.

Charles Dickens was born on February 7, 1812 into a family burdened with financial troubles. Despite his deprived beginnings, however, he achieved national renown upon the publication of his first novel, The Pickwick Papers. His early novels Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby, The Old Curiosity Shop, and A Christmas Carol solidified his enormous, ongoing popularity. When Dickens was in his late thirties, his social criticism became biting, his humor dark, and his view of poverty darker still. David Copperfield, Bleak House, Hard Times, A Tale of Two Cities, Great Expectations, and Our Mutual Friend are the great works of his masterful and prolific later period.


"Dickens￯﾿ﾽs success in evoking the terror of the mob in A Tale of Two Cities (it is what most readers remember long after they have forgotten Lucie, Darnay, and the rest) lies in his transferring those real and imagined terrors of childhood, of which he is the fictional master, to the adult world and the stage of history."￯﾿ﾽfrom the Introduction by Gillen D￯﾿ﾽArcy Wood