Book Review : A Tale of Two Cities

The two cities are London and Paris. I’m sure you knew.

The story starts in 1775 and finishes in 1792.

The book goes from “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times” to “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.” These are some of the most memorable words to start and finish a book that have ever been written.

Excerpts from the novel first appeared in Dickens’ new magazine All the Year Round between April and November 1859.

Essentially, two males characters fall for the same woman, one an English lawyer, Sidney Carton, the other a French aristocrat, Charles Darnay. The lawyer manages to rescue the aristocrat from a trial in The Old Bailey in London only for the aristocrat to be captured by French revolutionaries in Paris.

Marx and Engels appreciated Charles Dickens and his novels and regarded him as a fellow fighter against the social abuses of Victorian Britain. This is not accurate. According to Dickens, the violence of the French Revolution in Paris was as negative as the oppression of a rigid social order in London and just as self-destructive.

Love does win over hate in the end. This is also shown towards the end of the book by the result of a struggle between Miss Pross and Madame Defarge.