The Annotated A Tale of Two Cities is not a literary analysis of Dickens’s novel, but a source of information, for both the new reader and the longterm fan, about things, people, places, and events mentioned in the text, to enhance the experience of reading a classic historical novel published 150 years ago, and which takes place well over two centuries ago. In 780 notes to the unabridged novel, historical author Susanne Alleyn explains Dickens’s references to things and places familiar to 19th-century Londoners, illustrates his many literary allusions and Victorian expressions, and provides an in-depth, factual background to his gripping but often misleading depiction of the French Revolution—a period that owes much of its distorted image today to the popularity of A Tale of Two Cities itself.