Literary Fiction Social Criticism Utilitarianism Social Injustice Industrialization Class Disparity Family
Hard Times is a novel written by Charles Dickens and first published in 1854.
The novel is set in the fictional industrial town of Coketown. There, the story follows a number of characters, including the stern Thomas Gradgrind, who runs a school bent on teaching only facts and logic, to the exclusion of any fantasy or sentimentality. The education of Gradgrind's own children is the greatest example of this.
On the other hand, we also see the hard life of factory workers and the pitiful conditions they face every day. With a combination of satire, drama, and humor so typical of Dickens, the novel is a harsh critique of the Industrial Revolution and the social injustices of the time.
"The scene was a plain, bare, monotonous vault of a schoolroom, and the speaker’s square forefinger emphasized his observations by underscoring every sentence with a line on the schoolmaster’s sleeve."
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Hard Times by Charles Dickens is believed to be out of copyright restrictions only in the United States. It may still be copyrighted in other countries. If you are not located in the United States, you must check your local laws to make sure that the contents of this eBook are free from copyright restrictions in the country where you are located in before downloading Hard Times in PDF or ePub.
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Fans of Victorian Literature Readers Interested in Social Commentary Students Studying 19th Century British Literature
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Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded by...
We have 15 books by Charles Dickens in Alice and Books library