A Tale of Two Cities was published in weekly installments in Dickens’s own journal All the Year Round from April to November 1859, and in a single volume by Chapman and Hall in December 1859. It was, and remains, his most widely read novel — selling over 200 million copies, making it one of the best-selling books in any language. It is also his most anomalous: a historical novel, a thriller, a melodrama of sacrifice, set during the French Revolution and containing almost none of the comic invention, social observation, or London atmosphere that define his other work.
The Novel
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” The opening sentence — the most famous in English literature — establishes the novel’s method: the doubling and mirroring of London and Paris, of revolution and repression, of love and hatred. Dr. Alexandre Manette, imprisoned for eighteen years in the Bastille, is “recalled to life” by his daughter Lucie. She marries Charles Darnay, a French aristocrat who has renounced his title and his family’s cruelty. Sydney Carton, a brilliant, dissolute English barrister who resembles Darnay physically, loves Lucie hopelessly.
The Revolution erupts. Darnay returns to Paris to help a former servant and is arrested, tried by the revolutionary tribunal, and condemned to death. Carton — who has wasted his life and knows it — smuggles himself into the prison, drugs Darnay, takes his place, and goes to the guillotine. His final speech (imagined, not spoken): “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.”
Themes
Sacrifice — Carton’s death is the novel’s emotional and theological center: a wasted life redeemed by a single act of perfect selflessness.
Revolution — Dickens is sympathetic to the causes of the Revolution (the cruelty of the aristocracy is depicted without mitigation) but horrified by its methods. The Terror is presented as the inevitable but monstrous consequence of centuries of oppression.
Resurrection — the novel’s repeated motif. Manette is “recalled to life” from the Bastille. Darnay is recalled from the death sentence. Carton achieves spiritual resurrection through physical death.
Collecting A Tale of Two Cities
First edition in book form (Chapman and Hall, London, 1859): Red cloth binding with gilt lettering. Illustrated by Hablot Knight Browne (“Phiz”) with 16 plates.
Market values:
- Fine in cloth: $5,000–$15,000
- Very good: $2,000–$5,000
- Good: $800–$2,000
First edition in parts (serialized in All the Year Round, 1859): Individual issues containing installments are scarce. Complete runs: $3,000–$8,000.
The novel’s permanent status in English-language education — it is the most assigned Dickens novel in American high schools — ensures a uniquely broad audience for first editions.