A Tale of Two Cities Was Never About the Revolution - Dickens' Most Misread Novel

The Book Brief Project · May 1, 2026 · 10m

A Tale of Two Cities has a reputation for being a novel about the French Revolution. Charles Dickens is doing something more personal with that history: asking whether a person can become something other than what circumstance, failure and other people have already decided they are.Set between London and Paris before and during the French Revolution, the novel follows characters caught inside a world of inherited privilege, accumulated resentment and approaching violence. At its center is Sydney Carton, a man who appears to have wasted his abilities and expects almost nothing from himself…