A Tale of Two Cities - Book I (Chapters 1 - 4)
Summary
\"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness . . .\"
Dickens begins A Tale of Two Cities with this famous sentence. It describes the spirit of the era in which this novel takes place. This era is the latter part of the 1700s - a time when relations between Britain and France were strained, America declared its independence, and the peasants of France began one of the bloodiest revolutions in history. In short, it was a time of liberation and a time of terrible violence. Dickens describes the two cities at the center of the novel: Paris, a city of extravagance, aristocratic abuses, and other evils that lead to revolution and London, a city rife with crime, capital punishment, and disorder. In both cities, the capabilities of an angry mob were a dangerous thing, to be feared by all.
The tale begins on a road between London and Dover (in southern England) in......
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Approximate Word Count: 9519
Approximate Pages: 37 (260 words per double-spaced page) |