Often criticised for its melodramatic 'soap-opera' plot, Dickens' bold treatment of the violence and terrors of the French Revolution is still widely read and enjoyed today. This text looks at critical themes in the novel, as well as looking closely at the context in which it is set

A Tale of Two Cities is Charles Dickens’s great historical novel, set against the violent upheaval of the French Revolution. The most famous and perhaps the most popular of his works, it compresses an event of immense complexity to the scale of a family history, with a cast of characters that includes a bloodthirsty ogress and an antihero as believably flawed as any in modern fiction. Though the least typical of the author’s novels, A Tale of Two Cities still underscores many of his enduring themes—imprisonment, injustice, social anarchy, resurrection, and the renunciation that fosters renewal.

A classic tale of the young Englishman who gives up his life during the French Revolution to save the husband of the woman he loves.

Since its publication in 1859, A Tale of Two Cities has remained the best-known fictional recreation of the French Revolution, and one of Charles Dickens’s most exciting novels. A Tale of Two Cities blends a moving love story with the familiar figures of the Revolution—Bastille prisoners, a starving Parisian mob, and an indolent aristocracy. Taking the form of a sourcebook, this guide to Dickens's dramatic novel offers: extensive introductory comment on the contexts and many interpretations of the text, from publication to the present annotated extracts from key contextual documents, reviews, critical works and the text itself cross-references between documents and sections of the guide, in order to suggest links between texts, contexts and criticism suggestions for further reading. This volume is essential reading for all those beginning detailed study of A Tale of Two Cities and seeking not only a guide to the novel, but a way through the wealth of contextual and critical material that surrounds Dickens' text.

First published in 1993. This annotated bibliography covers all material relating to A Tale o f Two Cities from Dickens’s first hints of it in his Book o f Memoranda to critical studies published in 1991. It is divided into three main parts: “Text,” “Studies,” and “Selected Bibliography.”

A Tale of Two Cities has always been one of Dickens's most popular texts. Using a variety of disciplinary approaches, this new collection of essays examines the origins of Dickens vision of the French Revolution, the literary power of the text itself, and its enduring place in British culture through stage and screen adaptations.

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness…” A Tale of Two Cities is a novel set in London and Paris before and during the French Revolution. The novel depicts the plight of the French peasantry demoralized by the French aristocracy in the years leading up to the revolution, the corresponding brutality demonstrated by the revolutionaries toward the former aristocrats in the early years of the revolution, and many unflattering social parallels with life in London during the same period. Charles Dickens (1812-1870) was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era. His works enjoyed unprecedented popularity during his lifetime, and by the twentieth century critics and scholars had recognized him as a literary genius. His novels and short stories enjoy lasting popularity.