Anthony Slide, in his volume The Big V, A History of The Vitagraph Company writes that "A Tale of Two Cities" and "Vanity Fair" (three reels) were the two major productions of 1911, with "A Tale of Two Cities" having recieved "lavish praise".
In regard to Lost Films, Found Magazines and the many lost silent films that were released by Vitagraph and the extratextural discourse that accompanied audience reception, Anthony Slide, in the chapter on Fan Magazines in his volume The Idols of Silence, explains that the approximation yellow journalism (the British Museum notes that Vitagraph had passed off studio reenactments as documentary footage) had quickly progressed to corporate, rather entrepenuer, exploitation, J. Stuart Blackton having founded Motion Picture Magazine with Motion Picture Story Magazine as "publicity organs" for Vitagraph. "The magazine was to publish fictionalized versions of the film releases of the various companies with each company being alotted equal space." The companies that later were in need of film preservation, through Lost Films Found Magazines, left film detectives an approximation of how photoplays were visualized through publicity stills and descriptive narrative. Both "Tale of Two Cities" and "Vanity Fair" were serialized in the periodical during their first theatrical run for Vitagraph.
