Though plagued by frequent illnesses, his first years were also filled with exciting stories told to him by his parents and his nurse. The second of eight children of John and Elizabeth Dickens, Charles was born on February 7, 1812, in Portsmouth, England. He not only had experiences with the same joys and tragedies his characters would have, but he also had the great talent to make his readers feel and see all these experiences in detail. Instead, he felt he was destined to become a great novelist. Author Biographyįrom the time he was twenty-one, Charles Dickens knew he would not be the great actor he had imagined, nor even the journalist he next attempted to be. Public liked it, they certainly could not be seen to approve of it at all.' Modern critical opinion, however, has given the novel an important place among Dickens's most mature works of fiction. 'Most of the critics writing in the intellectual and literary journals of the day considered popular success a good reason to condemn a work,' explains Glancy.

On the other hand, a whole set of critics, most notably Sir James Fitzjames Stephen writing in Saturday Review, criticized the novel precisely for its popularity. One review in the magazine Athenaeum stated that A Tale of Two Cities had attracted the praise of a hundred thousand readers. He described the work in a letter to his friend John Forster, cited in Ruth Glancy's A Tale of Two Cities: Dickens's Revolutionary Novel, as 'a picturesque story rising in every chapter, with characters true to nature, but whom the story should express more than they should express themselves by dialogue.' The novel that emerged from his experimentation is now regarded as one of Dickens's most popular and most innovative works.ĭickens's work was very popular with the reading public when it was first published. Dickens took advantage of the novel's serial publication to experiment with characterization, plot, and theme. In an innovative move, Dickens simultaneously released installments of the novel on a monthly basis, beginning with all of Book 1 in June and concluding with the last eight chapters of Book 3 in December. Weekly publication of chapters 1-3 of Book 1 began on April 30, 1859. This novel of the French Revolution was originally serialized in the author's own periodical All the Year Round. A Tale of Two Cities occupies a central place in the canon of Charles Dickens's works.

Charles darnay a tale of two cities