Which Dickens novel begins 'It was the best of times'?

The Dickens novel that begins “It was the best of times” is A Tale of Two Cities. Its famous opening sentence immediately continues with “it was the worst of times,” establishing the novel’s pattern of sharp contrasts.

Published in weekly parts from April to November 1859, the novel is set in London and Paris before and during the French Revolution. Its central story follows Dr Alexandre Manette, his daughter Lucie, Charles Darnay, and the self-sacrificing lawyer Sydney Carton. The opening reflects a world divided between privilege and suffering, stability and upheaval, hope and despair.

The full opening is much longer than the familiar quotation. Dickens builds a series of paired opposites—wisdom and foolishness, belief and incredulity, light and darkness—before describing the period as resembling the present. These contrasts also foreshadow the novel’s doubles, especially Darnay and Carton.

Readers sometimes confuse the quotation with the novel’s title or remember it as a standalone phrase. It is the opening of Chapter 1, “The Period,” in Book the First.