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A Tale of Two Cities

Charles Dickens · 1859 · 135,421 words
6:34:43
at 385 wpm · the whole book
The audiobook runs about fourteen hours.

In 1775 a Tellson's Bank man crosses to Paris to bring home Doctor Manette, eighteen years in the Bastille and so far gone that, asked his name, he gives a cell number. Around that rescue Dickens sets Charles Darnay, a French marquis living in England under his mother's name; Sydney Carton, a gifted idler who does another lawyer's work and drinks the difference; and Madame Defarge, knitting the names of the condemned into a register in her wine-shop. Then the Revolution arrives and calls in every debt in the book. Fair warning: the middle is slow, coincidence-driven and withholding. The last third runs downhill with the brakes off.

45 chapters · begin at the beginning
1The Period2:49begin ▸
·2The Mail5:56sealed
·3The Night Shadows4:38sealed
·4The Preparation12:41sealed
·5The Wine-shop12:04sealed
·6The Shoemaker11:56sealed
·7Five Years Later6:52sealed
·8A Sight6:56sealed
·9A Disappointment14:13sealed
·10Congratulatory6:36sealed
·11The Jackal6:15sealed
·12Hundreds of People13:13sealed
·13Monseigneur in Town9:31sealed
·14Monseigneur in the Country5:27sealed
·15The Gorgon's Head11:53sealed
·16Two Promises8:32sealed
·17A Companion Picture4:04sealed
·18The Fellow of Delicacy7:26sealed
·19The Fellow of No Delicacy5:15sealed
·20The Honest Tradesman11:17sealed
·21Knitting12:18sealed
·22Still Knitting11:28sealed
·23One Night5:26sealed
·24Nine Days6:57sealed
·25An Opinion8:05sealed
·26A Plea3:55sealed
·27Echoing Footsteps12:19sealed
·28The Sea Still Rises5:54sealed
·29Fire Rises7:36sealed
·30Drawn to the Loadstone Rock12:40sealed
·31In Secret12:21sealed
·32The Grindstone7:08sealed
·33The Shadow5:05sealed
·34Calm in Storm5:59sealed
·35The Wood-Sawyer6:42sealed
·36Triumph7:09sealed
·37A Knock at the Door5:29sealed
·38A Hand at Cards13:43sealed
·39The Game Made13:35sealed
·40The Substance of the Shadow16:36sealed
·41Dusk4:17sealed
·42Darkness9:25sealed
·43Fifty-two13:03sealed
·44The Knitting Done13:31sealed
·45The Footsteps Die Out For Ever6:27sealed

How long does it take to read A Tale of Two Cities?

A Tale of Two Cities is 135,421 words. At an average adult reading pace of 300 words a minute that is about 7 hr 31 min, or roughly 5 hr 39 min if you read quickly and 11 hr 17 min at a more deliberate 200 words a minute.

That count is measured from the complete public-domain text rather than estimated from a page count, so you can compare all the books side by side.

Text: A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens (1859), public domain, via Project Gutenberg. · You read at the book's authored pace; nothing here is stored anywhere but this browser. · About Midsentence