A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens is an historical fiction novel set in 1775- 1793 in the cities
of Paris and London. The French Revolution serves as the historical backdrop to the story. The reliability and usefulness of A Tale of Two Cities in adding knowledge and understanding of the Reign of Terror in France will be examined.
Charles Dickens wrote this book in 1859 in London, sixty years after the key events mentioned in the book. He was greatly influenced by "The French Revolution", a book written by the historian Thomas Carlyle in 1837 for information on the time period event though it was decades old. He agreed with Carlyle that the Revolution was the necessary and inevitable outcome of the French aristocracy's oppressive power. …
