A Tale of Two Cities

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times” — Charles Dickens’ sweeping novel of love and sacrifice is set against the chaos of the French Revolution, moving between London and Paris.

The story follows Charles Darnay, a French aristocrat who renounces his family’s cruelty, and Sydney Carton, a dissolute English lawyer who finds redemption through an extraordinary act of selflessness. Both men love Lucie Manette, the daughter of a physician who spent eighteen years imprisoned in the Bastille. As the Revolution’s bloodlust spirals out of control and the guillotine claims victims by the hundreds, Dickens traces how cycles of oppression breed new cycles of violence. Originally serialized weekly in 1859, the novel builds to one of the most famous and emotionally devastating endings in all of fiction.

Published in 1859, A Tale of Two Cities is one of the best-selling novels of all time. Its themes of resurrection, justice, and self-sacrifice remain deeply moving.