Tale Of Two Cities

A Tale Of Two Cities (1861) has been considered to be Dickens' finest along with David Copperfield. As the name suggests, it  is the story of two cities-London and Paris-from England to France and back again, setting down finally in France and the French Revolution. Because of the intensity of his involvement, A Tale Of Two Cities has an intense dramatic sense, sometimes melodramatic, which probably explains why it remains the most widely read of all his novels. Like all great novels where no story is told as if it is the only one, this, too, has many elements-love, humour, pathos, fate, romance out of which is woven the story of Darnay and Manette, the unselfish, hopeless devotion to the heroine of the drunken, dissolute, nonchalant advocate, Sidney Carton. But for all the elements, the chief picture left with the reader in the end is the story of self-sacrifice-not of Manette or Darnay but of Sidney Carton, mounting the scaffold in place of the husband of the woman whom he loved.