| “ | It was the best of times, it was the worst of times... | ” |
—Opening line of A Tale of Two Cities[3] | ||
The first book of the novel takes place in 1775. Jarvis Lorry, an employee of Tellson's Bank, is travelling from England to France to bring Dr. Alexandre Manette to London on his return trip. Before crossing into France, he meets 17-year-old Lucie Manette at Dover, and reveals to her that her father, Dr. Manette, is not dead, as she had been told; instead, he was a prisoner in the Bastille for eighteen years.
Lorry and Lucie travel to Saint Antoine, a suburb of Paris and meet Monsieur Ernest and Madame Therese Defarge. The Defarges operate a wine shop they use to lead a clandestine band of revolutionaries; they refer to each other by the codename "Jacques", which Dickens drew from the Jacobins, an actual French revolutionary group.
Monsieur Defarge was Dr. Manette's servant before Manette's imprisonment and now has care of him, and he takes them to see the doctor. Because of his long imprisonment, Dr. Manette entered a form of psychosis and has become obsessed with making shoes, a trade he had learned whilst imprisoned. At first, he does not recognize his daughter; but he eventually compares her long golden hair with her mother's, which he found on his sleeve when he was imprisoned and kept, and notices their identical blue eye color. Lorry and Lucie then take him back to England.
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