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Dover in 1786, around the time of the setting of 'A Tale of
Two Cities'.
‘A Tale of Two Cities’, Dickens’s
twelfth novel, was published in instalments in a weekly magazine.
The first instalment appeared on 30 April 1859 and the last
on 26 November, the story was published a complete novel in
the same month.
The story opens in 1775, setting the scene
for the French Revolution, during which the bulk of the narrative
takes place. In the earlier period of the book Jarvis Lorry,
agent for Tellson’s Bank in London travels to Dover to keep
an appointment at a local inn.
In Chapter 4 the town is described and the
possibility of smuggling by the inhabitants is hinted at:
“When Mr. Lorry had finished his breakfast,
he went out for a stroll on the beach. The little narrow,
crooked town of Dover hid itself away from the beach, and
ran its head into the chalk cliffs, like a marine ostrich.
The beach was a desert of heaps of sea and stones tumbling
wildly about, and the sea did what it liked, and what it liked
was destruction. It thundered at the town, and thundered at
the cliffs, and brought the coast down, madly. The air among
the houses was of so strong a piscatory flavour that one might
have supposed sick fish went up to be dipped in it, as sick
people went down to be dipped in the sea. A little fishing
was done in the port, and a quantity of strolling about by
night, and looking seaward: particularly at those times when
the tide made, and was near flood. Small tradesmen, who did
no business whatever, sometimes unaccountably realised large
fortunes, and it was remarkable that nobody in the neighbourhood
could endure a lamplighter.”
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