Hard Times

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."