A Tale of Two Cities
The famous opening lists a series of opposites and then refuses to choose between them. The novel runs two plots, one in London and one in Paris, and brings them together in the shadow of the guillotine. Dr Manette has been buried alive in the Bastille for eighteen years; his daughter Lucie is the person who brings him back.
Dickens is unusually disciplined here. The book is short by his standards, the sentences are stripped down, and the ending has been quoted so often that it is easy to forget how odd it is: a man who has wasted his life decides to spend what is left of it on someone else's happiness.
Public-domain status
First published in 1859. In the United States, works published before 1930 are in the public domain. In the European Union the general term is the life of the author plus 70 years; Charles Dickens died in 1870, so this work has been free to republish there since 1941.
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Keep reading
- Pride and Prejudice — Jane Austen, 1813
- Great Expectations — Charles Dickens, 1861
- The Time Machine — H. G. Wells, 1895
- The Scarlet Letter — Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1850
- London — the city behind the books
- Reading lists — 19 ways through the collection
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