A Tale of Two Cities
Charles Dickens (1859)
“The most famous opening in English prose introduces a story where a drunken wastrel chooses death so the man he envies can live — and makes you believe every word of it.”
At a Glance
In the years leading to the French Revolution, London lawyer Sydney Carton falls in love with Lucie Manette, whose father was imprisoned in the Bastille for eighteen years. Lucie marries Charles Darnay — a French aristocrat who has renounced his family — and Carton pledges his life to her happiness. When Darnay is arrested in Revolutionary Paris and sentenced to the guillotine, the dissolute Carton switches places with him in prison, sacrificing himself. 'It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done.'
Read full summary →Why This Book Matters
Published serially in Dickens's own magazine All the Year Round in 1859, where it increased circulation from 100,000 to 300,000 readers. It is the best-selling novel in history by some estimates — over 200 million copies sold. More high school students have read the final line than almost any other sentence in English prose. It established the template for the historical novel as moral allegory and gave the English language its most famous paired superlatives.
Diction Profile
High Victorian formal — Latinate, periodic sentences, rhetorical flourish, biblical cadence in key passages
Very high