Hard Times
Charles Dickens
Hard Times
3.55from 76,597 ratingson Goodreads
"Hard Times" by Charles Dickens is a novel first published in 1854. Set in the fictional industrial town of Coketown, it satirizes the harsh social and economic conditions of Victorian England. The story follows the rigid utilitarian Thomas Gradgrind, his children Louisa and Tom, the boastful factory owner Josiah Bounderby, and the struggling mill worker Stephen Blackpool. Through their intersecting lives, Dickens examines the grinding divide between wealthy capitalists and exploited workers in post-Industrial Revolution society, questioning whether facts alone can sustain human happiness.
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About the author
Charles Dickens (1812–1870) was the defining English novelist of the Victorian age and, in his own lifetime, its most famous writer. When his father was imprisoned for debt the twelve-year-old Dickens was sent to work in a blacking factory, and the experience runs under everything he wrote about childhood, poverty and institutions that fail the people in them. Publishing in monthly instalments, he wrote for an audience that read each part as it appeared, which is part of why his books are built of cliffhangers and crowds of minor characters nobody forgets. His novels include Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, Bleak House, Great Expectations and A Christmas Carol.