110 Fun Facts About A Tale of Two Cities

Which two cities give A Tale of Two Cities its title?

Borges quipped that Dickens really could not write a tale of two cities, being a resident of just one: London.

In which year was A Tale of Two Cities published?

It is Dickens's best-known historical novel and one of the best-selling novels of all time.

How does the novel's famous first sentence begin?

The sentence piles up contrasting pairs that foreshadow the book's theme of doubles.

For how many years was Dr Manette imprisoned in the Bastille?

He emerges barely able to talk and obsessively makes shoes, a skill learned in prison.

What cryptic three-word message does Jarvis Lorry send back with Jerry Cruncher at the start of the novel?

It refers to Dr Manette's release, and gives Book the First its title.

Jarvis Lorry and the messenger Jerry Cruncher work for which London bank?

Lorry is put in charge of its Paris branch during the Revolution, which puts him in position to save the Manettes.

What craft does Dr Manette practise obsessively in his garret after his release?

He relapses into it on the morning of Lucie's wedding after learning her husband's true name.

What business do Ernest and Thérèse Defarge run in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine?

Defarge had been Dr Manette's servant as a youth and gives him lodgings on his release.

On what charge is Charles Darnay tried in London in 1780?

Two British spies testify against him.

How does Darnay's lawyer undermine the spy Barsad's claim that he would recognise Darnay anywhere?

The near-perfect resemblance between the two men drives the whole plot.

What does the Marquis St. Evrémonde do after his carriage kills a child in the Paris streets?

The coin is flung back into the carriage as he drives on.

Darnay is an anglicised version of what?

He dropped St. Evrémonde out of disdain for his aristocratic family.

Who kills the Marquis St. Evrémonde in his bed?

He evades capture for nearly a year before being hanged in the village.

What note is pinned to the murdered Marquis?

It mocks the careless speed that killed Gaspard's child.

What pet name does the governess Miss Pross use for Lucie?

She has looked after Lucie since the girl was ten and believes her scoundrel brother is the one man worthy of her.

What is Jerry Cruncher's secret night-time occupation?

His son follows him one night and aspires to the same trade.

What does Jerry Cruncher accuse his very religious wife of doing against him?

He blames her prayers for his failures at work and abuses her for it.

What is the title of Book the Second?

The golden thread is Lucie, who holds her family together and has hair like her mother's.

What nickname does Dickens give Sydney Carton because of his deference to the barrister Stryver?

He is a hard-drinking cynic who has watched Stryver advance while wasting his own gifts.

Whom does the ambitious barrister Stryver end up marrying after talking himself out of proposing to Lucie?

Jarvis Lorry had suggested that marrying Lucie would be unwise.

What does Darnay reveal to Dr Manette on the morning of his wedding to Lucie?

The revelation sends the doctor back to his old prison craft for days, a relapse kept secret from Lucie.

In which month and year do the Defarges help lead the storming of the Bastille in the novel?

Defarge searches Dr Manette's old cell thoroughly and finds a manuscript.

Whose pleading letter lures Darnay back to Paris in 1792?

Gabelle is named after the hated salt tax and has been coerced into writing.

In which Paris prison is Darnay held after his arrest as a returning aristocrat?

His family follow him to Paris and take lodgings near Lorry.

Who turns out to be Miss Pross's long-lost brother Solomon?

Carton blackmails him into helping by threatening to expose him as an English spy.

How does the Bastille manuscript read out at Darnay's retrial conclude?

The jury takes it as irrefutable proof of Darnay's guilt and condemns him to the guillotine.

What is the source of Madame Defarge's hatred of the Evrémondes?

She is revealed to be the surviving younger sister of the peasant family the brothers destroyed.

What does Madame Defarge secretly encode in her knitting?

She is a ringleader of the tricoteuses who knit beside the guillotine.

How does Madame Defarge die?

The shot permanently deafens Miss Pross.

What is the name of Madame Defarge's lieutenant and shadow?

Carton foresees her, Defarge, Cly and Barsad all perishing on the guillotine.

How does Carton get his lookalike out of the condemned cell?

Barsad then carries the unconscious Darnay out to the waiting carriage.

Who holds Carton's hand on the tumbril ride to the guillotine?

She alone realises he has taken another man's place and admires the sacrifice.

How does the novel's famous closing line begin?

It ends: it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.

In the closing vision, what does Carton foresee the son who bears his name becoming?

He sees the boy grow up foremost of just judges, bringing his own son to the place of execution to hear the story.

To what age does Jarvis Lorry live, according to the end of the book?

He is a methodical gentleman of sixty when the novel opens, and a little vain of his good leg.

In which periodical did Dickens serialise the novel in 31 weekly instalments?

The first instalment ran in the magazine's very first issue on 30 April.

Dickens founded his new weekly after quarrelling with the publishers of which earlier magazine?

They had refused to print his personal statement about his separation from his wife.

Which Wilkie Collins play, in which Dickens acted, inspired the novel's love triangle?

Dickens played Richard Wardour, a man who gives his life so his rival can have the woman they both love.

A play by Watts Phillips with the same setting and climax led to talk of plagiarism. What was it called?

Dickens had been given the play to read while acting in the Collins production.

Which historian's The French Revolution: A History was Dickens's most important source?

Carlyle was enthusiastic about the finished novel, which heartily delighted Dickens.

To which prime minister did Dickens dedicate the novel?

The dedication reads: In remembrance of many public services and private kindnesses.

Which is the only other Dickens novel that is a work of historical fiction?

Both are set amid riots and revolution in the 18th century.

Lucie Manette may reflect Dickens's relationship with which young actress?

The character has been noted as resembling her physically.

Which critic dismissed the novel as "a dish of puppy pie and stewed cat"?

Mrs Oliphant more mildly found little of Dickens in it.

Research suggests which London house was the model for Dr Manette and Lucie's home?

It is now the House of St Barnabas, and the nearby street was renamed Manette Street.

Who played Sydney Carton in the 1935 MGM film, which was nominated for Best Picture?

Colman recreated the role three times on radio, including for Cecil B. DeMille's Favorite Story.

Who played Carton in the 1958 British film directed by Ralph Thomas?

Christopher Lee played the Marquis St. Evrémonde and Dorothy Tutin was Lucie.

Which 2012 superhero film drew on the novel and quotes Carton's last words in a eulogy?

Jim Gordon reads the passage at Bruce Wayne's graveside.

Where did the novel place in the BBC's 2003 Big Read poll?

WorldCat lists more than 1,500 editions of the book.

Who starred as Carton in the 1938 Mercury Theatre on the Air radio adaptation?

He played the part again on Lux Radio Theater in 1945.

Which composer of Jesus Christ Superstar-era musicals wrote Two Cities, the Spectacular New Musical, in 1968?

Edward Woodward starred; Jeff Wayne later wrote the musical War of the Worlds.

Jill Santoriello's musical A Tale of Two Cities opened on Broadway in 2008 at which theatre?

James Barbour played Carton and Natalie Toro was Madame Defarge.

How many chapters does the novel have?

Dickens also republished them as eight monthly parts in green covers.

In which year does the novel open, with Jerry Cruncher flagging down the Dover mail-coach?

Lorry meets Lucie Manette in Dover before crossing to Paris to collect her father from the Defarges.

Who is the second British spy, alongside John Barsad, who testifies against Darnay in London?

Cly later fakes his own funeral; Cruncher discovers the coffin held only rocks.

What does Jerry Cruncher find when he digs up the coffin from the spy Cly's funeral?

The discovery proves Cly is alive and gives Carton the leverage he needs over Barsad in Paris.

Besides the weekly serial, how else did Dickens issue the novel between April and November 1859?

All but three of his previous novels had first appeared in monthly instalments, so the format was familiar to his readers.

Which future Sherlock Holmes actor appeared in the 1935 MGM film alongside Ronald Colman?

Elizabeth Allan, Reginald Owen and Edna May Oliver rounded out the cast of the Best Picture nominee.

Who played Sydney Carton in BBC Radio 4's seven-hour 1989 dramatisation?

Nick McCarty adapted it and Ian Cotterell directed; a 2012 Mike Walker version won a Bronze Sony Radio Academy Award.

Which actor starred as Carton in the 1980 television film with Alice Krige and Kenneth More?

Krige played Lucie Manette in the adaptation; the same year Kenneth More was nearing the end of his career.

Which Game of Thrones star plays Sydney Carton in the 2026 television series of A Tale of Two Cities?

Kit Harington is also an executive producer of the series, which reached screens in 2026 with the actor François Civil as Charles Darnay.

In A Tale of Two Cities, Monseigneur needs four richly dressed servants to serve him which morning beverage?

Chocolate reaches his lips only after one footman carries the pot, a second froths it, a third offers the napkin and a fourth pours. Dickens uses the ritual to mock a court blind to a starving France.

At Darnay's London trial in A Tale of Two Cities, Lucie recalls his joke that which American might rival the king?

George Washington, Darnay had said in jest, might one day be almost as famous as George the Third. The courtroom treats the joke as heresy, and the bench glares up from its notes.

Which shared code name do Defarge and his fellow revolutionaries call one another in A Tale of Two Cities?

Jacques was the nobles' old scornful name for any peasant, and it gave the peasant rising of 1358 its name, the Jacquerie. Defarge is Jacques Four in his own inner circle.

Which French king is tried and beheaded while Darnay waits in prison in A Tale of Two Cities?

Louis XVI was guillotined in January 1793, ending more than a thousand years of French monarchy. Dickens never names him, writing only that the king was tried, doomed and beheaded.

When a cask breaks in the street in A Tale of Two Cities, which word does a joker scrawl on a wall?

Blood is the word, written with a finger dipped in the muddy dregs the hungry crowd has been scooping from the gutter. Dickens warns that the same stones will be stained again in time.

Darnay's Paris trials in A Tale of Two Cities come during which violent period that ended when Robespierre fell?

The Reign of Terror passed more than 16,000 official death sentences across France before it ended in July 1794. Darnay faces the tribunal in its first winter, after fifteen months in a cell.

Which Hammer horror Dracula played the Marquis St. Evrémonde in the 1958 film of A Tale of Two Cities?

Christopher Lee played the Marquis in the same year that Hammer's Dracula made him a horror star. The film's director later praised the performance as very contained.

What does Madame Defarge pin in her hair in A Tale of Two Cities to warn customers of a spy?

A rose in her head-dress is the signal, and her customers stop talking and drift out the moment she picks it up. The newcomer that day is a paid informer hunting for loose talk.

Charles Darnay's first trial in A Tale of Two Cities is held at which London court?

The Old Bailey of the 1780s was, Dickens writes, a deadly inn-yard from which pale travellers set out for the next world. Londoners paid at the door to watch a trial there as they would a play.

How does Charles Darnay earn his living in England in A Tale of Two Cities, having renounced his family estates?

Teaching French to young men makes him a modest name, though Dickens notes that a later age would have called him a professor. He spends part of his time with undergraduates at Cambridge.

In A Tale of Two Cities, Defarge and the patriots of Saint Antoine wear rough woollen caps of which colour?

Red caps marked the Paris revolutionaries, modelled on the felt cap given to freed slaves in ancient Rome. Dickens's mender of roads trades his blue one for it once the rising begins.

What relation is the murdered Marquis St. Evrémonde to Charles Darnay in A Tale of Two Cities?

His uncle is the twin of Darnay's dead father, and the brothers once shared the family's crimes. Darnay tells him to his face that he renounces both the property and France.

Which weakness has wasted the brilliant legal mind of Sydney Carton when A Tale of Two Cities introduces him?

Drink is his ruin, and Dickens says that what Carton and Stryver put away between two law terms might have floated a king's ship. Carton still does the legal thinking for both of them.

Before Jarvis Lorry tells her the truth in A Tale of Two Cities, young Lucie Manette believes she is what?

An orphan is what she calls herself when she asks the bank for a protector on the road to France. She takes the news that her father lives as a summons to meet his ghost.

What becomes of the Evrémonde château in A Tale of Two Cities once revolution reaches the countryside?

It is burned down by four strangers who close in from the four points of the compass. The soldiers shrug that it must burn, and the villagers light candles in every window.

What lasting injury does Miss Pross carry out of Paris at the close of A Tale of Two Cities?

Deafness falls on her in an instant: after a single crash she never hears another sound, not even the carts of the condemned rumbling past as she escapes with Jerry Cruncher.

In A Tale of Two Cities, what is stuffed into the mouth of Foulon, who told the poor to eat it?

Grass fills his mouth in the novel as the rope breaks twice. The scene follows history: the real Joseph Foullon, a royal finance minister, was lynched in Paris eight days after the Bastille fell.

Jerry Cruncher tells his wife and son in A Tale of Two Cities that his night-time outings are for what?

Fishing is the cover story, and his sharp-eyed son remarks that the rod seems to get rather rusty. Jerry replies that the boy has asked questions enough.

Working through the night on Stryver's cases in A Tale of Two Cities, Sydney Carton wraps what around his head?

Wet towels, steeped in a basin of cold water and wrung out, sit on his head while he boils down the briefs. He gets up to soak them again whenever a point of law turns knotty.

The crowd sharpening blades at a grindstone in A Tale of Two Cities is carrying out which real killings of 1792?

The September Massacres killed more than a thousand prisoners in the jails of Paris within a few days. Dr Manette walks unharmed among the killers because he was once a prisoner of the Bastille himself.

Which wild revolutionary dance sweeps past Lucie in the snow outside Darnay's prison in A Tale of Two Cities?

The Carmagnole was both a song and a street dance of the Paris crowds, and Dickens has some five hundred people whirl through it like demons. The name also covered the short jacket they wore.

When revolution comes in A Tale of Two Cities, the grand lord Monseigneur escapes France disguised in whose clothes?

His cook's dress gets him over the border, a sour joke on the man who once needed four servants at breakfast. Tellson's Paris branch sits in a wing of the mansion he fled.

Where in Dr Manette's old Bastille cell does Defarge find the hidden manuscript in A Tale of Two Cities?

In the chimney, behind a stone that had been worked loose and replaced, the paper lay for more than twenty years. Defarge searched the cell on the day the fortress fell and kept the paper hidden for years.

On the day the Bastille falls in A Tale of Two Cities, whose head does Madame Defarge cut off with her knife?

The governor's neck is under her foot before she uses the knife she has long kept ready. The real governor of the fortress, the Marquis de Launay, was killed and beheaded by the crowd that day.

The former mender of roads in A Tale of Two Cities turns up in Paris doing which job beside Darnay's prison?

Sawing firewood, he calls his saw his little guillotine and lops each log as if it were a head. Madame Defarge later rehearses him to swear that Lucie made signals to the prisoners.

Which sound at the Manettes' quiet corner does Lucie imagine as people entering their lives in A Tale of Two Cities?

Echoing footsteps fill the corner on stormy nights, and Sydney Carton remarks that a whole crowd must be on its way to them. Dickens brings the echoes back as the mob marching on the Bastille.

Which producer, soon to make Gone with the Wind, oversaw MGM's 1935 film of A Tale of Two Cities?

David O. Selznick made it in the same year as his David Copperfield, then left MGM to run his own studio. He wanted one star to play both Carton and Darnay, but the actor refused.

In A Tale of Two Cities, a black flag flies night and day above which Paris landmark?

Notre Dame carries the flag as the new Republic declares for victory or death against the world in arms. Three hundred thousand men, Dickens writes, rise to fight the tyrants of the earth.

In A Tale of Two Cities, the Marquis's killer is hanged forty feet above which village landmark near the château?

The fountain supplies the village's water, and the body is left hanging there to poison it. Dickens links the Marquis to fountains throughout: his carriage kills a child beside one in Paris.

Which grim nickname for the guillotine does Dickens record in A Tale of Two Cities, among jests that it cured headaches?

The National Razor was a real Paris joke of the 1790s, and Dickens adds the quips that it cured headaches and kept hair from turning grey. Models of it were worn in place of the cross.

Stryver recalls that he and Sydney Carton were schoolfellows at which old English school in A Tale of Two Cities?

Shrewsbury is where Carton, by his own account, did the other boys' exercises and seldom his own. Stryver calls him the old seesaw Sydney, up one minute and down the next.

The Dover mail of A Tale of Two Cities opens the story toiling through mud up which slope outside London?

Shooter's Hill, on the old road into Kent, had a name as a haunt of highwaymen, which is why the guard treats every passenger as a robber. The travellers walk beside the coach to spare the horses.

Jarvis Lorry's bank in A Tale of Two Cities stands beside which London gateway once topped with severed heads?

Temple Bar spanned Fleet Street at the edge of the City, and heads were still shown on spikes above it in the 1700s. Dickens says they ogled the bank's letters through its windows.

Dr Manette of A Tale of Two Cities is introduced as a physician formerly of which French cathedral town?

Beauvais is where he was born, as he records in the paper he hides in his cell before naming himself a later resident of Paris. Lucie knows the town's name before she knows her father is alive.

Leaving England in A Tale of Two Cities, Jarvis Lorry asks about the next packet boat to which French port?

Calais was the usual landing for the Dover packet, and Lorry asks about the next sailing the moment he climbs, mud-spattered, out of the night mail. He is told the tide will serve at two the next afternoon.

What happens to Charles Darnay only hours after the Paris tribunal sets him free in A Tale of Two Cities?

He is arrested again that same evening, when four armed men knock at the family's door. They say he has been denounced by the Defarges and by one other, who goes unnamed until the morning.

Under the Republic in A Tale of Two Cities, a decree makes everyone address each other by which title?

Citizen, with citizeness for women, replaced monsieur and madame, and Dickens notes that the habit of the keenest patriots had become law for everybody. Even little Lucie is greeted that way.

In the Bastille chapter of A Tale of Two Cities, Dickens again and again likens the Paris crowd to what?

The sea is his image for the attackers, a living tide that rises wave on wave against the walls. The chapter that follows is titled for the same waters still rising.

The opening sentence of A Tale of Two Cities sets 'the spring of hope' against 'the winter of' what?

Despair completes the last of five balanced pairs about the age itself, after which the sentence turns to 'we' and what lay before us. Shakespeare's winter, in Richard III, was one of discontent.

In the first sentence of A Tale of Two Cities, 'the epoch of belief' is paired with 'the epoch of' what?

Incredulity is the mate Dickens chose, an old word for disbelief. He ends the sentence by remarking that the period was, in short, very like his own.

Asked his name in A Tale of Two Cities, Dr Manette replies 'One Hundred and Five' and which two words?

North Tower was the part of the Bastille that held his cell, and the number was all the name he had kept. Defarge shouts the same words at a turnkey years later, on the day the fortress is stormed.

Dining with Darnay after the trial in A Tale of Two Cities, Sydney Carton calls himself 'a disappointed' what?

Drudge is his word, and he adds that he cares for no man on earth and no man cares for him. Left alone, he tells his own reflection that he hates his dinner guest.

What does the Marquis St. Evrémonde tell Darnay is 'the only lasting philosophy' in A Tale of Two Cities?

Repression, he says, will keep the dogs obedient to the whip for as long as his roof shuts out the sky. He is found stabbed in his bed the next morning.

In the final vision of A Tale of Two Cities, Carton sees 'a brilliant people rising from this' what?

Abyss is his word for revolutionary Paris, which he pictures becoming a beautiful city once the evil of the age has worn itself out. Dickens frames the vision as what Carton would have said, had he spoken.

Jerry Cruncher of A Tale of Two Cities defends his secret night work by calling himself an 'honest' what?

Tradesman is the word he clings to from his first night ride, and Dickens makes it a chapter title, The Honest Tradesman. That chapter follows him on one of his secret outings.

In A Tale of Two Cities, which word 'was pushed out of the tall houses' in the washing of Saint Antoine?

Hunger is named again and again in one paragraph, down to the inscription on the baker's shelves of scanty bread. Only the shops selling tools and weapons look prosperous.

The burial-service verse Sydney Carton repeats on his last night walk in A Tale of Two Cities is from which Gospel?

John gives the words to Jesus, spoken to Martha before the raising of Lazarus. Carton first heard them as a young man at his father's funeral, and they return to him at the scaffold.

Jarvis Lorry of A Tale of Two Cities keeps insisting he has no feelings and is merely 'a man of' what?

Business is his shield whenever feeling threatens, and he even calls himself a mere machine. The claim fools nobody, since it was he who brought the infant Lucie across the Channel to England.

Madame Defarge tells her husband in A Tale of Two Cities to 'tell Wind and' what 'where to stop', but not her?

Fire is the second force she names when Defarge pleads that the killing must stop somewhere, short of Lucie and her child. Her two companions, Dickens says, take a horrible enjoyment in her wrath.