Best of times
Charles Dickens · A Tale of Two Cities · 1859
“It was thebest of times,it was theworst of times”
$29.99
Free shipping (US)
Color: White
Size
- Printed to order
- Ships with tracking
- Misprints replaced free
About the words
Best of Times, Worst of Times
Dickens begins his novel with a sentence that never quite lets go of the reader, and it is wiser than it first looks. The year is 1775. The age is wisdom and foolishness, belief and incredulity, spring of hope and winter of despair, all at once.
Look at where the sentence lands: the period, he says, was so like our own that its noisiest authorities insisted it be taken "in the superlative degree of comparison only". Dickens first ran this in weekly instalments in 1859, and he was teasing his own readers too.
Every era thinks it is the greatest or the worst. This line says it is nearly always both.
Why we chose it: one of the best-known openings in English, and a dry joke about every age that thinks it is the superlative.
- Author
- Charles Dickens
- Work
- A Tale of Two Cities
- Year
- 1859
Size guide
Unisex fit. Measurements are the shirt laid flat.
| Size | Chest (in) | Length (in) |
|---|---|---|
| S | 18 | 28 |
| M | 20 | 29 |
| L | 22 | 30 |
| XL | 24 | 31 |
| 2XL | 26 | 32 |
| 3XL | 28 | 33 |
| 4XL | 30 | 34 |
Care
- Machine wash cold, inside out, with similar colors.
- Tumble dry low, or hang to dry.
- Don’t iron directly on the print. Don’t dry clean.
