The classic story of feuding families set against a backdrop of London and Paris during the French Revolution reveals the author's belief that from the ashes of the past can come the birth of a more enlightened age.
One of Dickens's most haunting novels, A Tale of Two Cities has, since its first serial publication in 1859, continued to exert a grip on the popular imagination. The two cities of the title--a lethal, vengeful Paris during the French Revolution and a leafy, tranquil London--are only one of the novel's stark dichotomies, which are continued as Syndey Carton and Charles Darnay are drawn toward their separate destinies--their lives touched by the same woman.
In his absorbing Introduction, Richard Maxwell discusses the novel's intricate design, in which Dickens magnificently interweaves epic drama with personal tragedy. Comparing it to Thomas Carlyle's French Revolution and Victor Hugo's Les Miserables, Maxwell argues that A Tale of Two Cities "stands as Dickens's most memorable effort to see a world in a very small space; a work short by its nature . . . yet curiously at its ease among giants."
From The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature:
Novel by Charles Dickens, published both serially and in book form in 1859. The story is set in the late 18th century against the background of the French Revolution. Although Dickens borrowed from Thomas Carlyle's history, The French Revolution, for his sprawling tale of London and revolutionary Paris, the novel offers more drama than accuracy. The scenes of large-scale mob violence are especially vivid, if superficial in historical understanding. The complex plot involves Sydney Carton's sacrifice of his own life on behalf of his friends Charles Darnay and Lucie Manette. While political events drive the story, Dickens takes a decidedly antipolitical tone, lambasting both aristocratic tyranny and revolutionary excess--the latter memorably caricatured in Madame Defarge, who knits beside the guillotine. The book is perhaps best known for its opening lines, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times," and for Carton's last speech, in which he says of his replacing Darnay in a prison cell, "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."
