An English novelist who lived from 1812 to 1870, Charles Dickens was twelve years old when his father was sent to debtor's prison. Almost the entire Dickens family accompanied Dickens' father and took up residence in the Marshalsea Prison. Only young Charles stayed behind. He lived in a small attic room and worked in a shoe-blacking factory. During this time he gained a firsthand understanding of poverty and class politics, subjects that permeate A Tale of Two Cities.
French nobles and peasants in the 1700s. In the latter part of the ninth century, nobles assumed supreme power in France. Even the king exercised little more authority than any other noble. Society consisted of two classes-the nobles and the commoners, with the latter class made up of peasants and craftsmen who received protection from and were subject to the authority of the nobles. In the eleventh century, however, the situation began to change as society saw the slow growth of a middle class, or bourgeoisie, made up of independent merchants. Their emergence was accompanied by new activity on the part of the commoners, who increasingly staged uprisings or purchased their freedom from the nobles.
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