Paris and London

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way..."

The above opening to Charles Dickens' historical novel, A Tale of Two Cities (Paris and London), is perhaps the most memorable opening of any work of fiction.  It describes a truism whether we are talking about 1789 (the French Revolution), 1859 (when Dickens wrote this story), 1949 (my fourth birthday) or 2019 (today).  

Charles Dickens was born in England in 1812.  His father was a pay clerk in the British Navy.  Dickens submitted his first story to a London periodical magazine in 1833.  In 1836, he finished the final installments of his first popular story, The Pickwick Papers.  This was quickly followed up with Oliver Twist.  

Over the years Charles Dickens wrote many famous novels, such as A Christmas Carol, Great Expectations, David Copperfield, Hard Times and Bleak House.  At the time of his death from a stroke in 1870, he was writing installments published in a weekly magazine (commonly done at the time) of a novel entitled The Mystery of Edwin Drood.  The novel (what happened to Drood?) went unfinished, but is available for modern readers to attempt to read the mind of Dickens.

Returning to A Tale of Two Cities, it is a story of people caught up in the French Revolution and its subsequent Reign of Terror, directly in France and indirectly in England.  An educated, wealthy Englishman (Carton), who has led a life without any purpose, has decided to finally do some good.  He travels to Paris and changes places (in a prison) with a Frenchman (Darnay), a good man who is condemned to death simply because of his membership of the royal family.  Darnay escapes to London to join his family in exile.  

On his way to the guillotine, Carton utters the following lines which are one of the most memorable last lines of any novel.           

"It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known."