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.A Tale of Two Cities is one of only two works of historical fiction by Charles Dickens (the other being Barnaby Rudge)The novel takes place primarily in London and Paris in the latter half of the eighteenth century. It spans a time period of roughly thirty-six years, with the (chronologically) first events taking place in December 1757 and the last in either late 1793 or early 1794.Research published in The Dickensian in 1963 suggests that the house at 1 Greek Street, now The House of St Barnabas, forms the basis for Dr Manette and Lucie's London house.[Wikipedia]"The general edifice of the plot is solid; its interest is, notwithstanding the crowded background, concentrated with much skill upon a small group of personages; and Carton's self-sacrifice, admirably prepared from the very first, produces a legitimate tragic effect.... Altogether, the book is an extraordinary tour de force, which Dickens never repeated." - A.W. WARD."With singular dramatic vivacity, much constructive art, and with descriptive passages of a high order everywhere, ... there was probably never a book by a great humorist, and an artist so prolific in the conception of character, with so little humor and so few rememberable figures. Its merits lie elsewhere.... I should myself prefer to say that its distinctive merit is less in any of its conceptions of character, even Carton's, than as a specimen of Dickens's power in imaginative story telling.... To the end, the book in this respect is really remarkable."- JOHN FORSTER."The best novel, surely, like the best play, is that in which inner character and outward action are developed simultaneously; in which the growth of mind and heart and will are expressed through tangible and striking scenes. In this respect Vanity Fair and A Tale of Two Cities and Adam Bede and Pan Michael- to choose stories of very different types - accomplish what Shakespeare accomplished in Macbeth. They allow us to watch the growth or the decay of a soul even while we are fascinated by a spectacle."- BLISS PERRY."Its portrayal of the noble-natured castaway makes it almost a peerless book in modern literature, and gives it a place among the highest examples of literary art.... The conception of this character shows in its author an ideal of magnanimity and of charity unsurpassed. There is not a grander, lovelier figure than the self-wrecked, self-devoted Sydney Carton, in literature or history; and the story itself is so noble in its spirit, so grand and graphic in its style, and filled with a pathos so profound and simple, that it deserves and will surely take a place among the great serious works of imagination."- GRANT WHITE.