Read A Tale of Two Cities in Daily Email Installments
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. A prisoner is recalled to life after eighteen years in the Bastille; a Paris wine-shop keeps a register of the doomed, knitted in wool; and two men with the same face love the same woman as the Revolution gathers. Dickens's shortest major novel, with the most famous first and last lines he ever wrote.
One installment a day: 251 days — about eight months. Pause, rewind, or stop anytime.
Start reading — freeWhy read A Tale of Two Cities?
A Tale of Two Cities is Dickens with the brakes off: no subplots, no comic detours that outstay their welcome, just a single story swinging between London and Paris as the French Revolution builds from murmur to Terror. He wrote it in weekly installments and it reads like it — nearly every chapter ends on a turn, and the three Books (Recalled to Life, The Golden Thread, The Track of a Storm) tighten like a spring.
It is also the Dickens novel people quote without knowing it: the opening sentence, the knitting women counting heads at the guillotine, and an ending so famous that we are contractually obliged to say nothing about it except that readers have been arguing for a century and a half about whether it is the most moving thing he ever wrote. (It is.)
We serialize the complete novel in Dickens's original text, broken at his own chapter seams — every installment's subject line carries Dickens's own chapter title, from “The Period” to “The Footsteps Die Out Forever” — with a “Previously” recap on every installment.
What an installment looks like
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way—in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.
There were a king with a large jaw and a queen with a plain face, on the throne of England; there were a king with a large jaw and a queen with a fair face, on the throne of France. In both countries it was clearer than crystal to the lords of the State preserves of loaves and fishes, that things in general were settled forever.
It was the year of Our Lord one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five. Spiritual revelations were conceded to England at that favoured period, as at this. Mrs. Southcott had recently attained her five-and-twentieth blessed birthday, of whom a prophetic private in the Life Guards had heralded the sublime appearance by announcing that arrangements were made for the swallowing up of London and Westminster. Even the Cock-lane ghost had been laid only a round dozen of years, after rapping out its messages, as the spirits of this very year last past (supernaturally deficient in originality) rapped out theirs. Mere messages in the earthly order of events had lately come to the English Crown and People, from a congress of British subjects in America: which, strange to relate, have proved more important to the human race than any communications yet received through any of the chickens of the Cock-lane brood.
Questions
How long does it take to read A Tale of Two Cities?
About ten hours straight through (135,489 words). By email, it's 251 daily installments of 2–3 minutes each — about eight months, or faster at a premium pace of two or three installments a day.
Do I need to know French history?
No. Dickens assumes nothing — the Revolution arrives the way it would have arrived for his characters, as rumor, then dread, then the mob at the gate. Everything you need is on the page.
What is it about, without spoilers?
A French doctor is released after eighteen years of unjust imprisonment and rebuilt by his daughter's devotion in London. Around them: a French émigré with a dangerous name he has renounced, a brilliant, wasted English lawyer who looks exactly like him, and a wine-shop in Saint Antoine where an implacable woman knits. Then 1789 comes.
Is the ending really that famous?
The last line is one of the half-dozen most quoted sentences in English fiction, and the recaps are written so that nothing about the final movement reaches you early. If you somehow don't know how it ends, we envy you the last week of installments.
Which edition is this?
Dickens's original English text in the carefully typeset Standard Ebooks edition, drawn from the public-domain text. His short 1859 preface is omitted so installment 1 opens on the famous first sentence.
How does it arrive?
One email a day at the hour you pick, with a one-line recap of the previous installment at the top. Free. Unsubscribe or pause anytime.
Pick your delivery hour, confirm your email, and installment 1 of 251 arrives with the next send. Free, and unsubscribe anytime.
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