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A Tale of Two CitiesOn the coverLiberty Leading the People, Eugène Delacroix, 1830
A Tale of Two Cities
As revolution boils over in Paris and simmers in London, a dissolute English lawyer and a French émigré’s family are drawn toward the guillotine, Dickens’s sweeping story of resurrection, sacrifice, and history’s terrible tide.
Character notes and context for the chapter you’ve read.
It opens with the most famous sentence in English and ends with one of its most moving, a tighter, more propulsive Dickens than usual, about whether a wasted life can still be redeemed.
Setting1775–1793 · London & Paris
The 1780s, with France sliding toward the Terror: bread riots and aristocratic excess on one shore, a complacent London on the other, and a revolution about to devour its own.