Historedia
EuropeEvent

Dickens publishes A Tale of Two Cities

When
1859
Where
London
Episodes
1

Charles Dickens published A Tale of Two Cities in 1859, a historical novel set in London and Paris during the French Revolution. The work was serialized weekly in All the Year Round from April to November 1859. It is regarded as his best-known historical fiction, drawing on sources like Thomas Carlyle's history and accounts of the Terror.

Episodes

  1. 30 April 1859 to 26 November 1859 · LondonWeekly Serialisation in All the Year Round

    The first weekly instalment ran in the first issue of All the Year Round on 30 April 1859, continuing until 26 November 1859.

Background and detail

Literary Influences. The novel's rhetoric and symbolism were influenced by Thomas Carlyle's The French Revolution: A History. Dickens also utilized material from an account of imprisonment during the Terror by Beaumarchais and records of a French spy trial from The Annual Register. These sources provided historical grounding for the narrative's depiction of the social disparities leading to the Revolution.

People involved

Sources

  1. A Tale of Two Cities Wikipedia, revision of 2026-10-06
  2. Charles Dickens Wikipedia, revision of 2026-10-02

Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.