Three books, forty-five chapters and one golden thread: a chapter-by-chapter summary with our own counts of the key phrases.
A long, carefully built novel whose first two books set up a family and a resemblance and whose last book cashes both in. The middle book is more than half the text. Four out of five (draft opinion).
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A Tale of Two Cities summary by book and chapter: the golden thread, recalled to life, the twin figures Carton and Darnay and the Fifty-Two, with our counts from the text. Full spoilers.
A Tale of Two Cities is Charles Dickens’s novel of London and Paris from 1775 into the French Revolution. We use the free Project Gutenberg text, ebook #98, which has three books and forty-five chapters.
Below is a summary by book and chapter, built around the phrases that give the books their titles, plus our own counts of ‘golden thread’, ‘recalled to life’, ‘resurrection’ and the names Darnay and Carton. Full spoilers throughout.
A long, carefully built novel whose first two books set up a family and a resemblance and whose last book cashes both in. The middle book is more than half the text. Four out of five (draft opinion). Read it if: you like long plots that pay off; you want to see how a classic is built in three books; you enjoy a famous ending that was planted early. Skip it if: victorian setups try your patience; you want the revolution on stage from page one; you want a short read.
A Tale of Two Cities summary by book and chapter: the golden thread, recalled to life, the twin figures Carton and Darnay and the Fifty-Two, with our counts from the text. Full spoilers. Summary: A Tale of Two Cities →
Set in London and Paris from 1775 to the Terror, it follows Doctor Manette, freed after almost eighteen years in the Bastille, his daughter Lucie, her husband Charles Darnay, and Sydney Carton, who looks like Darnay. Darnay is condemned in Paris, and Carton takes his place at the guillotine.
Into three books and forty-five chapters in the Project Gutenberg text: Book the First, Recalled to Life (6 chapters); Book the Second, the Golden Thread (24); Book the Third, the Track of a Storm (15). By our count they hold about 13, 52 and 35 percent of the chapter text.
By our count the phrase appears four times in the story text, all in Book the Second: once in chapter four, twice in chapter twenty-one and once in chapter twenty-four. It also sits in that book's title. It does not appear in Book the Third.
In my reading, because of a promise. In Book the Second, chapter thirteen, he tells Lucie he would give his life to keep a life she loves beside her. The resemblance planted at the Old Bailey in chapter three of Book the Second lets him swap places with Darnay in Book the Third, chapter thirteen.
The wife of the Paris wine-shop keeper Ernest Defarge. She keeps a register of enemies in her knitting. In Book the Third, chapter twelve, she says the peasant family wronged by the Evremonde brothers was her own family. Miss Pross's pistol struggle kills her in chapter fourteen.
The Project Gutenberg text, ebook number 98, A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. All chapter numbers on this page follow its three books.
By our count the word appears twice in Book the Second, both times as Resurrection-Man in a grave-robbing joke in chapter fourteen, and four times in Book the Third, all tied to Carton's recitation of the burial words.
