Daily Literature Page2026/06/12 10:23:09"It was the best of times" — Dickens's most famous sentence, unpackedFourteen paired opposites. One unresolved sentence. Dickens opens A Tale of Two Cities (1859) with a rhetorical structure that suspends the reader between contradictions — and then mocks anyone who thinks their own era is uniquely dramatic. A close read of the passage, its key terms, and a reflection question.
