A Tale of Two Cities was serialized in 1859 in Dickens’s new weekly venture, All the Year Round, and was published in book form in the same year. It has remained one of his most consistently popular works, admired as much for its succinct plot as for its vivid setting. Although Dickens himself thought it the best story he had written, it has often been unjustly disparaged by critics.
This Companion to A Tale of Two Cities reveals the great care Dickens took with the planning and preparation of his story and clearly indicates its roots in the work of the most influential thinker of the Victorian age, Thomas Carlyle. It also explores the aspects of Dickens’s life, especially his interest in private theatricals, which contributed to the genesis of the novel.