A Tale of Two Cities A Tale of Two Cities A Tale of Two Cities (1859) is a historical novel by Charles Dickens, set in London and Paris before and during the French Revolution. The novel tells the story of the French Doctor Manette, his 18-year-long imprisonment in the Bastille in Paris and his release to live in London with his daughter Lucie, whom he had never met. The story is set against the conditions that led up to the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror. Dickens's famous opening sentence introduces the universal approach of the book, the French Revolution, and the drama depicted
A Tale of Two Cities republished the chapters as eight monthly sections in green covers. All but three of Dickens's previous novels had appeared only as monthly instalments. The first weekly instalment of "A Tale of Two Cities" ran in the first issue of "All the Year Round" on 30 April 1859. The last ran thirty weeks later, on 26 November. "A Tale of Two Cities" has been cited as one of the best-selling novels of all time. It has been stated to have sold 200 million copies since its first publication, though this figure has been dismissed as "pure fiction" by Oxford University's Peter