Charles Dickens: Hard Times

DO NOT BUY THIS BOOK! ! ! ! Let me rephrase... do not buy THIS COPY of this book. It does NOT have page numbers, it is NOT ANNOTATED in any way, and there is no viable punctuation!
Dickens is great, but the book, but get a BN copy or, if you're an academic, get a Norton Critical. This is clearly printed in some dude's basement and is a RIP OFF if you're trying to do anything worthy with it. 100% do not buy

charles dickens is one of my favorites.....i have listened to almost everything available on cd.....i'm sure this book is as wonderful as all the others but I'm gonna have to read it i guess....the person who narrates this book is so distracting that i cannot follow the story line...maybe it's just me but I've about given up....for this reason alone,not because of the wonderful author,I cannot recommend this audiobook at all

I purchased these books more as decoration for a shelf I have in my family room. They look great and add that little bit of color and style I was looking for. They're not big books though if thats what you're looking for, but great to look at! Feel sturdy as well.

Book arrived in excellent condition and everything. I just didn't really like it. Was a required read for History class. I don't read many books and when I do I'm more of a Dan Brown type book reader.

Not my favorite Sickens novel. A Tale of Two Cities, Bleak House and Great Expectations so far hold those places. But classic Sickens humor and vicious wit make this a worthy read. I really enjoyed it.

I chose this rating because the book was in amazing condition and I was very happy with the book. The book did look regularly sized in the picture though and in real life it is shaped weirdly. Other than that I have no complaints and I enjoyed the read.

Coketown is Dicken's foreshadowing of the future of industrialization and the decline of liberal arts in the 21st Century. The greed of the present 1% polluting our planet, cascading us into unfettered global warming and the dominant
educational philosophy of replacing arts and literature with science and math instead of seeing their symbiosis is all laid out in this 150 year old piece of Science fiction by Dickens

This was my second Dickens' novel. (I read A Christmas Carol before Christmas.) While it is fairly short for a Dickens novel, I quite enjoyed it. I love how Dickens brought the plights of the poor and the working class to the forefront in his novels. He also highlights the emphasis in education at the time on memorizing facts instead of also allowing children to use their imaginations and learning through alternative ways. The fictional Coketown is the setting for much of the novel and it is quite a dreary, smog laden, miserable place to live. "Every day was the same as yesterday and tomorrow and every year the counterpart of the last and the next." Dickens definitely showed no love for the rich owners of the mills and the way the workers were treated. The principle characters include Thomas Gradgrind, Sr., who is raising his children, Louisa and Tom, through the strict principles of a good life, i.e facts, facts, facts. His friend, Mr. Bounderby, is aptly described by Dickens as a having braggart humility. He is quite insufferable. Mrs. Sparsit, once a rich, well born woman, has fallen on hard times and is employed by Mr. Bounderby. Young Sissy is a daughter of a clown in a circus and a student in Mr. Gradgrind's school. Rachel and Stephen are poor, working class people. I really enjoyed seeing the interactions of the characters and seeing them grow and change or seeing a lack of growth and change, in some cases. I also enjoy Dickens' commentary and shining a light on the social injustices of the time he lived in. So many changes in industry and rights of the workers were being strived for at the time.

Dickens was always a social critic but in none of his novels did he so seriously contrast a bombastic ,self absorbed and self made industrialist with a group of noble and honest working class people as did in Hard Times. While in some respects this novel is consistent with his other works it is a more serious book with fewer elements of humor than many of th other more famous novels.
The characters are well realized and memorable as you would expect from Dickens and the plot has a good deal of suspense that keeps the reader absorbed.
A tough look at a fictional Victorian era English town and its inhabitants during the industrial revolution, Hard Times is well worth reading..

Perfect condition. Perfect addition to my collection. Nothing at all wrong with the books I purchased. They were both wrapped so that it was impossible to be damaged, couldn't be happier! Many thanks!

Dickens knew well the dark, satanic mills of 19th century England. Besides being great stories, many of his novels slammed the downside of the industrial revolution that had made England the dominant world power of his times. In a way, I would say that this atmosphere and the people created by those times are the main character in HARD TIMES rather than any one of the individuals depicted. Not having read so many of Dickens' novels, I can hardly qualify as an expert, but I would say that this one is not among his best. In unforgettable scenes (surrounded with lush verbiage), he exposes the shallow soullessness of education at the time,, the arrogance of the rich, and the plight of the poor, not forgetting the crude bombast of the labor organizers. Father-daughter relationships rate highly, marital ones much less so. The good remain high-minded, loyal, and self-sacrificing while the bad are exposed for what they are. The vain, philistine Mr. Bounderby, an exploiter with perfect nouveau riche attitudes, (and apt name) is by far the most vivid character, even if you get sick of him right off. The "good guys"---Stephen Blackpool, Rachael, "Sissy" Jupe, Louisa Gradgrind, and ultimately, her father---are not as interesting as the more shady ones. To tell the story, with all its ins and outs, its turns of the screw, would be superfluous. If you ever liked Dickens, you'll probably enjoy this one too, but if you want a real classic, I suggest "Bleak House" or "Oliver Twist", both much better than the present volume in my opinion. While Dickens never fails to put in his digs at the injustices and pretences of society, literature still needs a solid story. This one is a bit frail, but worthwhile all the same.

Arguably, Dickens could be classified as the greatest of all English speaking novelists...of all times. There are very few writers that can offer his consistency, novel after novel, story after story. Yes, many have written works that perhaps equal any of his given works, but few if any have been able to turn out such a volume of pure quality. Very, very few authors have had such a large portion of their work pass the test of time. Dickens gains new readers year in and year out and there is a reason for this!

Over the past 50 or so years I have heard this particular work referred to as "not Dickens' best," and "A minor work by Dickens," and other comments along those lines. I am really not in a position, nor do I have the ability to proclaim or rank this author's work one way or the other. Dickens for me is like any other author...I either like it or I do not like it; it either is a joy to read or it is not. Now I have read this short novel at least five times over the years and listen to several versions on CD and Tape. The best, minor Dickens' work, timeless classic, not pertinent in today's world, a mere political rant? Well I don't know. I do know that it is one of my favorites and do look forwarded to reading it again down the road. I am one of those horrid and probably misguided individuals who sort of make their own mind up about anything I read, and more or less ignore the pontifications of those that are suppose to know about such things. All that being said though, I cannot look you in the eye and state that I have ever read one story; one word by this author that I did not enjoy right down to the tip of my toes. He delights me.

The setting of course is in Victorian England and the Industrial Revolution is in full tilt. Make no mistake; Dickens makes no pretenses of not being of the extreme left ilk...a good little Socialist through and through. This work, like many others make his feeling well known. Like much of his work, there is no in-between here. The characters portrayed here are either very, very evil or they are very, very good. The author handles social situations in much the same way he handles his characters in this work. All are exaggerated to a certain extent, all are black and white and there is little middle ground to be found. The Capitalists are truly pigs and the working classes, the proletariat, are all Saint like creatures. For what the author is attempting here, this is quite appropriate.

Now let it be know right here that I have spent a lifetime trying my best of completely ignore the effete yammering from the left and the bellicose braying from the right in all matters. I am one of those creatures who simply do not care and more or less chose my own road. I read this story and others like it, for the sheer joy of soaking in the written words of a maters story teller. While the political and social message here is not lost on me, I simply choose to ignore it. That is just me though and it certainly makes me feel nothing less of those that take the political message and run with, or reject it... more power to them.

As with all of his other work, Dickens has created some unforgettable, if exaggerated characters in this work; my favorite Gradgrind (who, I must admit, sort of reminding me of my own father), his children Tom and Louisa, the young girl Grangrind has taken to raise, Sissy Jupe and of course the completely obnoxious cad Bounderby. Even the location; the city of Coketown is more like a character than a place displaying many of the characteristics of a human, rather than that of a town or village. Dickens is able to describe these people and places in such a way that they become close friends...even the evil ones, soon after they are introduced....well, maybe not friends, but certainly people you know and will want to revisit from time to time at the very least.

The term "hard times," while a good title for this work is a bit misleading in a way, as there is plenty of humor injected throughout the book. Seldom does a chapter pass that I find myself not chuckling over the bits of ironic humor and scathing satire the author inserts here and there. The opening tirade of Bounderby is an absolute hoot even to this day, as it certainly was at the time it was written.

And the plot! While it is simple at first glance in this work, there is never-the -less many little side plots going constantly, with personalities created an thrown in here and there to add flavor and spice to the overall story. The author skillfully blends these side paths he takes us upon and before the end of the story, brings us back to the main road. I like this! In many ways simple; in many ways so complex. I suppose the reader will find what they want.

As with all of Dickens' work, the reader must at all times keep in mind when, where and why it was written. Time and place are quite important in the understanding of this particular author and to not consider these things, much will be lost to the modern mind.

Highly recommend this one and I hope it brings others the same reading joy it has brought to be over the years.

Don Blankenship
The Ozarks

I love Charles Dickens!

He is the best storyteller ever. Sure, his plots are the tiniest bit melodramatic sometimes, but that's what a good story is all about--the big events. Dickens published in serial form, so he had to include cliffhangers to keep readers coming back for more. You don't have to read the first 50 (or 100) pages to get to the meat of the story; he starts off with a bang and never lets up.

The story of Hard Times concerns the children of Thomas Gradgrind, who have been educated at his school and at home to ignore emotion and "fancy" in preference for facts. "Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else," he says. Consequently, his children Louisa and Thomas grow up emotionally stunted and, in the case of Thomas, selfishly self-centered.

Intertwined with their story is the story of Mr. Bounderby, the factory owner in the fictional city of Coketown, who also adheres to the philosophy of "just the facts," allowing him to ignore the wretched condition of the town and the workers because the statistics say that everything and everybody are proven to be above average.

Dickens often concerned himself with revealing the inadequacies and failings of society and government during his time, and that was the case here. While this philosophy of education is no longer in vogue (In fact, it has veered the other way somewhat.), the viewpoint of the factory owner still seems to be operative--it's all about the facts--profit and loss figures. What does it matter that rivers and lakes are polluted; it's too expensive to fix those problems. What does it matter that hundreds of thousands of people in my own country are put out of work; it improves the profit-margin to outsource overseas.

But the real genius of Dickens resides in his portrayal of characters. They are sometimes exaggerated, particularly the villains, but they are instantly recognizable as people you have known. When I meet a person who is a real suck-up, I think to myself, "He's a Uriah Heep." (from David Copperfield) When I meet a person who seems truly selfless and empathetic, I think to myself, "She's a Biddy." (from Great Expectations) Now when I meet a person who is a complete humbug, pretending to be someone he isn't, I will think, "He's a Mr. Bounderby."

This is not the most enjoyable Dickens book I have read, but it was still better than books by most everybody else. It was a little grim, short on the usual comic relief, but still better than the rest. Just as the less-well-known plays of Shakespeare (which are also melodramatic and have exaggerated characters, but are long on story and accurate character portrayal) are also better than the rest.

Read more Dickens!

Dickens strikes again with his inspired character names.

Josiah Bounderby (bounder = British for dishonorable man)
Stephen Blackpool (bottomless pit of unrelenting misfortune)
and the coup de grâce,
Mr. M'Choakumchild (you guessed it, a teacher)

As usual, the writing is clever and flowing, but I really missed my Hollywood ending with this one. Overall pretty grim, and lacking in the humor and hope brilliantly displayed in Our Mutual Friend.

Hard Times takes place in the industrial city of "Caketown" during the Victorian era. The novel, as is usual with Dickens' work, has multiple characters and subplots, but focuses primarily on the Gradgrind family.The successful Thomas Gradgrind raised his children according to fact and reason. Wonder, imagination, fancy and heart are strictly forbidden in both his house and the school he owns. His life philosophy proves disastrous in the lives of his children: Louisa, his daughter, finds herself in a loveless marriage and on the verge of scandal while his son Tom has turned into a selfish scoundrel, gambler and thief. Mr. Gradgrind is forced to reevaluate his way of life and accept that love, compassion, wonder and heart are invaluable in the development of children and society.
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Favorite Quotes:
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"Now what I want is facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else and root out everything else" (Dickens 9).

"His skin was so unwholesomely deficient in the natural tinge, that he looked as though, if he were cut, he would bleed white" (Dickens 12).

"Do the right thing and the kind thing too, and make the best of us; not the worst!" (Dickens 282).
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Favorite Word: Balderdash: senseless talk or writing; nonsense. (Oxford Dictionary of English)
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Recommended: ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Yes. It's probably a crime not to recommend Dickens! ?He is undoubtedly one of the best writers ever! Hard Times is one of his shorter novels and is (like most of Dickens' work) very wordy. There are multiple passages destined to philosophical admonitions by the narrator. The pace of the book, however, is fairly quick and succeeds in keeping the reader engaged throughout.
Even though Hard Times was written over 150 years ago, some of the themes it explores are universal and still important today: The mechanization of society and the planet, the loss of individuality, the importance of love and imagination in childhood, the struggle to achieve a balance between reason and fancy, head and heart are just a few interesting themes this novel serves as food for thought.

For my money, this is far from being among Dickens' best work, but thankfully neither is it poor. What pegs it back a tad is the over-reliance of metaphor in the first part of the tale, or to be more accurate as it's more a personifying / reducing / minimising a greater / general thing to narrower specifics we can easier identify with (rather than one thing meaning something totally different intellectually - Animal Farm being a great example), the creation of a microcosmic world representing a very real reality - in this case the woes of the industrial revolution in the smoky, grimy mill towns of the north and north-west of England.

Ok, metaphors and microcosms conveniently sidelined : the book we are to read to be amused / diverted by, ('I said diverting, not amusing!') is, mainly, a tale of a family - the Gradgrinds, whose children are brought up to appreciate nothing but fact and reason and logic (Spock, as in Mr not the Doc, would have fitted in very well here); no emotions, abstract musings or 'fancies' are to be tolerated. The trouble is - it doesn't work: the eldest - Louisa, while accepting the physical realities still cherishes sentiment, the two philosophies clash and she for some time / some part of the tale - suffers accordingly; her younger brother Tom,(but not the youngest of the family), resents his upbringing even more strongly and simply uses it in his young adult life, to his best advantage - ostensibly he is all for two and two making four, in reality, he wants a surplus to benefit no-one but himself.

As a counter-balance, a lack of reason is to be found in the circus, particularly in the young lady, circus-girl Sissy Jupe and her (soon-to-be former) guardians.

In the middle, showing independent thought, is the plain, honest Stephen Blackpool. He refuses to strike, is sent to Coventry by his fellow workers (and to-be strikers) and, rather ironically although most will understand why, is also flagged by the main man - Mr Bounderby, mill owner (and bank owner to boot), and given the heave-ho. A non-striker he may be, but he is still showing independent thought, not good according to Bounderby, Grandgrind and the rest.

It is good to see that Mr Dickens' opted for the very real reality of the tendency to protect our own - even in the event of a serious crime. I am not saying this is right - then or now - of course, I am just saying many perhaps most do or would tend to do like-wise. Some grammatical oddities too: people do not look out of THE window, they look OUT WINDOW; seen this and similar too many times across many old tales to think of these as typos / missing words.

The tale is not over long, the 280 pages or so for most Dickens fans will seem like a short story, and it is bright, breezy, engaging and the tragic hunt near the end is excellent, guessable - but excellent. But engaging as it is for what it is, it is a tad on the light side overall, and that's why I think it merits the workaday three star rating and no more.

... of English literature? I read "Hard Times" -- the 1969 Penguin Classics edition, which I still own and which is still intact -- roughly 40 years ago, in the midst of a Dickens binge, and I'm surprised to find that the humor in it has gotten angrier from aging on my book shelf. The anger has a lot of targets: industrial pollution and ugliness, the smug hypocrisy of the wealthy, the connivance and impotence of lawmakers, the class inequity of the Law, the dysfunctional divorce laws of England, the inaccessibility of education for the poor, the 'utilitarian' social philosophy of the era, the sort of education that crushed a child's creativity under the thumb of intellectual conformity and economic utility. In fact, a lot of the humor of "Hard Times" is of the bitter, scornful variety -- no less funny for being preachy -- while the tirades of anger are bedecked and bedizened in the drollest caricatures and exaggerations, as if Mr. Pickwick were asked to expound the utopianism of Charles Fourier.

But I admit that I had remembered "Hard Times" inaccurately. I recalled it as being a tale of 'labor agitation' in a mill town, rather like Emile Zola's great protest novel "Germinal". There is indeed a brief episode of labor protest, scarcely a chapter in the middle of the book, but the narrative focuses far more on the family affairs of the utilitarian philanthropist Gradgrind with his two children and the despicable mill owner Josiah Bounderby, boor, boaster, bully, buffoon. Gradgrind has raised his daughter and son, by the most systematic repression of their imaginations and sympathies, to be paragons of utilitarian values. The son inevitably turns out to be a self-centered scoundrel and the daughter a frigidly dutiful automaton. Gradgrind weds his beautiful young daughter to the far older and dictatorial Bounderby, and plot complications ensue. "Hard Times" encompasses three tales of woefully failed marriages, a thwarted seduction and hopelessly obstructed romance. There's really only one "working man' in the cast of "Hard Times" - the honest but 'limited' weaver Stephen Blackpool, whose eventual fate provides the pathos readers must have expected in a novel of 1854. The 'introduction' to my ancient Penguin Edition, by David Craig, perceptively challenges Dickens's own inability to assign a well-rounded self-determining 'humanity' to his lower-class characters, for all of his purported sympathy with their plight. Blackpool has the virtues of a victim only, a dumb beast. The circus performers, who appear in the novel at the beginning and who return at the end, are likewise morally admirable but incomplete. Frankly, if one stops too often to think about the reforming zeal of Charles Dickens, one can get frustrated with the man, especially when reading his earlier novels like Hard Times. He was, I fear, as hidebound in his assumptions of social class as anyone in Victorian England; he merely had a warmer heart and a much sharper pen. There's a brisk current of influence from the literary works of Dickens to the political and sociological notions of Progressivism, the Social Gospel, the Temperance Movement, and all the elitist reformers of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries.

Do not, however, let analysis of any Dickens novel inhibit your pleasure at the vitality and inventiveness of his words! That's another thing I'd forgotten over the years since my first Dickens binge: just how damned well the aptly-named "Dickens" could write!

I love all the Norton Critical editions of literature. Not only do you get a handsomely presented copy of Hard Times, but articles and criticism about the work in one package.

For me Hard Times becomes the indispensable Dickens. The relationship between Sissy Jupe and the Gradgrind children is something that is relevant today as it was 165 years ago. That the Education system can ruin children is absolutely a point that needs to be addressed in modern times. The Gradgrind academy only cares about facts, and only turns out vacuous twits. Only Sissy Jupe comes out of the academy with a head on her shoulders. Young Tom Gradgrind shows the folly of removing morals from the schools. He has no understanding of anything but how to take advantage of any particular situation. What is worse, his Father Old Tom Gradgrind tries to cover for him. How is that not relative to today's world?

Besides getting the novel, one also gets the critical articles in the back, which help make sense of the whole thing. I am not saying that Dickens, in any of his works is hard to understand, but I especially like the articles from the time period in which the works were written. For teachers of literature, this book is a must. I highly recommend it.

Always concerned with issues of class, social injustice, and employment, Dickens shows in Hard Times, written in 1854, a broader concern with the philosophies and economic movements which underlie those issues. Three parallel story lines reflect a broad cross-section of society and its thinking.

Mr. Thomas Gradgrind runs a school founded upon the principles of rationalism, a belief in the importance of facts, the antithesis of romantic "fancy" and imagination. Basically a good man, he denies the importance of emotion--for himself, his children, and his students. Only Student #20, Sissy Jupe, the daughter of a circus clown, fails to conform to his notions, and in a hilarious, satiric scene at the beginning of the novel, Dickens shows the absurdity of Gradgrind's teachings.

Gradgrind's friend, Mr. Bounderby, is a banker and factory owner, aged fifty, who claims to have risen from the gutter to his present lofty position through hard work. Bounderby treats the employees of his Coketown factory as machines, rather than as humans, and his eventual marriage to the teenaged Louisa Gradgrind is seen by both as a marriage of "tangible fact," having nothing to do with affection.

The third story line involves Stephen Blackpool, a worker in Bounderby's factory, trapped in a marriage to an alcoholic who periodically appears and extorts money from him. Stephen is in love with Rachael, an adoring factory worker, but his appeal to Bounderby for help in ending his marriage is met with cold, rational pronouncements. Shortly after, Bounderby fires Stephen "for a novelty," forcing him to seek employment elsewhere.

As the story lines overlap and intersect, often with consummate irony, Dickens keeps a light enough hand to prevent the story from becoming a polemic, though his criticism of hypocrisy, corruption, and "progress" at the expense of humanity is clear. His humor, often dark, keeps the plot moving, and several of his characters, which are often caricatures, do grow and change. Characteristically, Dickens uses names symbolically-Gradgrind grinds the emotions from his graduates, hires Mr. M'Choakumchild as a teacher, and lives at Stone Lodge. Mr. Bounderby proves to be a bounder. Some of the circus performers, like Sissy, live at Pegasus Arms.

The dramatic conclusion, which involves the pursuit of an innocent character widely believed to have committed a robbery, draws all the themes together, showing the parallels, contrasts, and ironies which connect these characters, regardless of their social level. Less epic in plot than some of Dickens's other novels, Hard Times provides an intimate look at a changing economy and an important commentary on the philosophies of the times. Mary Whipple

Get the audiobook read by Simon Prebble. Prebble is a reader of genius, absolutely brilliantly captures the spirit of Dickens. Charles himself couldnt have done better. Made me love Dickens. Great work, mr. simon!!!!!!

Hard Times is unique in Charles Dickens' vast canon - a compact, concise novel from a writer known for epic, sweeping ones and a thoroughly serious, highly didactic work from an author known for light-hearted, sentimental ones. It was an immediate bestseller and has always been widely read, but its differences have long meant that Hard has not been as widely popular as his more famous works. Conversely, some who are usually hard on Dickens - notably F. R. Leavis - think it his best, or even his only truly great, work. I think it is somewhere between - well below Dickens' best but not with his least significant work. Opinions will surely continue to vary widely, and all must make their own decision.

Though sometimes unfairly criticized as lightweight, all Dickens' novels are sociopolitically conscious - a trait that became ever more pronounced. This mid-career work was his first overtly sociopolitical novel, and he never again made such an obvious attempt - or, according to many, such a successful one. It has two main targets: the extremes of capitalism and utilitarianism. Hard was written when the Industrial Revolution was in full swing; factories were spreading swiftly, beginning to dominate skylines and having an environmental effect. More noticeably and immediately, they were starting to monopolize the economy; the poor had come almost to depend on them. This gave them (just barely) enough to get by, but their lives were otherwise wretched: dirty, cramped, and in every other way meager. Hard's fictional Coketown is a highly accurate, vividly detailed version of the industrial cities that had come to have a strong presence. They were in one way impressive - clear proof of advancing technology. However, they were also an eyesore and had an adverse effect on many areas of society. Dickens memorably shows what made them so horrid - the dirt, stink, and other viscerally putrid factors plus the more important human elements. This last comes mostly via his usual set of highly memorable, fully sympathetic characters. Hard unflinchingly depicts the truly miserable working conditions of the era's laborers, and Dickens paints their plight so engagingly, emotionally, and thought-provokingly that we feel with and for them. Behind all this are of course greedy capitalists who cynically fed off such wretches without caring for their condition and the corrupt, apathetic politicians who let them. Dickens does not focus on them directly, doubtless because it would draw less sympathy from the average reader, but the perceptive can sense their presence. We also see how the poor lived outside work and get a ghastly overall glimpse of mid-nineteenth century England's seedy lower class life. As all this suggests, Dickens essentially laments the same miseries as Marx - though of course with a far different emphasis and endgame.

Utilitarianism was a popular philosophical antidote, but Dickens thought it hardly better than the problem. Hard is arguably misleading, or even unfair, in that it focuses only on the system's most utterly extreme manifestations; one might even call it a caricature. However, the aspects it viciously satirizes did exist. Dickens deals mostly with educational implications. The incredibly daunting educational regimen forced on the book's children seems near-unbelievable but is actually a reduced - yes, reduced - version of that inflicted on Utilitarian John Stuart Mill. Dickens knows that proponents of such things had good intentions, satirizing them relatively lightly in the book's only real comic segments, but shows their effects on children to be disastrous. High-minded as such utilitarians may have been, they were absurdly impractical, robbing children of childhood without even knowing it and arguably teaching them fewer real skills than more conventional methods could have if correctly applied.

It is to Dickens' credit that he does all this without heavy-handedness. His points come across quite forcefully; he powerfully tugs at our hearts and minds, and his super-popular works may have even had a hand in reform. Yet he never loses sight of the story, which is engaging and relatively fast-paced, full of suspense and twists. As always with Dickens, the book is highly emotional, and the characters are strong. Even those not keen on the unconventional elements will appreciate these traditional strengths.

All told, Hard is recommended more for those not usually fond of Dickens than for fans, though the latter should also read it. They may not like it as much as they will expect, but Dickens was such a strong writer that everything he wrote can be enjoyed and appreciated; whatever else we think of Hard Times, it is certainly not hard reading.

To write an outline of Hard Times or Dickens' work would not be necessary. His writing has withstood the test of time, and is well know. To give encouragement to would-be Dickens' readers and Hard Times readers does seem like time well spent.

Hard Times ventures from other Dickens' books in the writing style lending a departure from Dickens' previous descriptive formats. In this particular book, Dickens lends skill, imagination, and panache to English language usage. He breathes life in to the language of the novel, and he remains a master of dramatic setting and story line. When people say, "Read good books, it will rub off on you." Hard Times comes first to my mind. Therefore, a reason to read Hard Times would be to improve your own reading and writing.

I admit some of the character's lives are depressing. When I looked back upon the entire book, and wondered if Hard Times would differ if set in present day with cell phones, PDAs, the Internet, electricity, airplanes, automobiles, and so many distractions. My guess would be - probably not. Would Louisa Gradgrind's life have taken a different course if she were living in today's world? My guess would be, perhaps, a slight shift on her circumstances, and, again, probably not. Dickens' charms include being able to put his finger on a character type and bring it to life. This is why I'd call certain present day figures, "A Mr. Bounderby" or "A Gradgrind". The Whelp or Tom Gradgrind remains alive and kicking; I've met him.

My recommendation: Read Hard Times. You will be a better reader and writer for it.

Always concerned with issues of class, social injustice, and employment, Dickens shows in Hard Times, written in 1854, a broader concern with the philosophies and economic movements which underlie those issues. Three parallel story lines reflect a broad cross-section of society and its thinking.

Mr. Thomas Gradgrind runs a school founded upon the principles of rationalism, a belief in the importance of facts, the antithesis of romantic "fancy" and imagination. Basically a good man, he denies the importance of emotion--for himself, his children, and his students. Only Student #20, Sissy Jupe, the daughter of a circus clown, fails to conform to his notions, and in a hilarious, satiric scene at the beginning of the novel, Dickens shows the absurdity of Gradgrind's teachings.

Gradgrind's friend, Mr. Bounderby, is a banker and factory owner, aged fifty, who claims to have risen from the gutter to his present lofty position through hard work. Bounderby treats the employees of his Coketown factory as machines, rather than as humans, and his eventual marriage to the teenaged Louisa Gradgrind is seen by both as a marriage of "tangible fact," having nothing to do with affection.

The third story line involves Stephen Blackpool, a worker in Bounderby's factory, trapped in a marriage to an alcoholic who periodically appears and extorts money from him. Stephen is in love with Rachael, an adoring factory worker, but his appeal to Bounderby for help in ending his marriage is met with cold, rational pronouncements. Shortly after, Bounderby fires Stephen "for a novelty," forcing him to seek employment elsewhere.

As the story lines overlap and intersect, often with consummate irony, Dickens keeps a light enough hand to prevent the story from becoming a polemic, though his criticism of hypocrisy, corruption, and "progress" at the expense of humanity is clear. His humor, often dark, keeps the plot moving, and several of his characters, which are often caricatures, do grow and change. Characteristically, Dickens uses names symbolically-Gradgrind grinds the emotions from his graduates, hires Mr. M'Choakumchild as a teacher, and lives at Stone Lodge. Mr. Bounderby proves to be a bounder. Some of the circus performers, like Sissy, live at Pegasus Arms.

The dramatic conclusion, which involves the pursuit of an innocent character widely believed to have committed a robbery, draws all the themes together, showing the parallels, contrasts, and ironies which connect these characters, regardless of their social level. Less epic in plot than some of Dickens's other novels, Hard Times provides an intimate look at a changing economy and an important commentary on the philosophies of the times. Mary Whipple

Always concerned with issues of class, social injustice, and employment, Dickens shows in Hard Times, written in 1854, a broader concern with the philosophies and economic movements which underlie those issues. Three parallel story lines reflect a broad cross-section of society and its thinking.

Mr. Thomas Gradgrind runs a school founded upon the principles of rationalism, a belief in the importance of facts, the antithesis of romantic "fancy" and imagination. Basically a good man, he denies the importance of emotion--for himself, his children, and his students. Only Student #20, Sissy Jupe, the daughter of a circus clown, fails to conform to his notions, and in a hilarious, satiric scene at the beginning of the novel, Dickens shows the absurdity of Gradgrind's teachings.

Gradgrind's friend, Mr. Bounderby, is a banker and factory owner, aged fifty, who claims to have risen from the gutter to his present lofty position through hard work. Bounderby treats the employees of his Coketown factory as machines, rather than as humans, and his eventual marriage to the teenaged Louisa Gradgrind is seen by both as a marriage of "tangible fact," having nothing to do with affection.

The third story line involves Stephen Blackpool, a worker in Bounderby's factory, trapped in a marriage to an alcoholic who periodically appears and extorts money from him. Stephen is in love with Rachael, an adoring factory worker, but his appeal to Bounderby for help in ending his marriage is met with cold, rational pronouncements. Shortly after, Bounderby fires Stephen "for a novelty," forcing him to seek employment elsewhere.

As the story lines overlap and intersect, often with consummate irony, Dickens keeps a light enough hand to prevent the story from becoming a polemic, though his criticism of hypocrisy, corruption, and "progress" at the expense of humanity is clear. His humor, often dark, keeps the plot moving, and several of his characters, which are often caricatures, do grow and change. Characteristically, Dickens uses names symbolically-Gradgrind grinds the emotions from his graduates, hires Mr. M'Choakumchild as a teacher, and lives at Stone Lodge. Mr. Bounderby proves to be a bounder. Some of the circus performers, like Sissy, live at Pegasus Arms.

The dramatic conclusion, which involves the pursuit of an innocent character widely believed to have committed a robbery, draws all the themes together, showing the parallels, contrasts, and ironies which connect these characters, regardless of their social level. Less epic in plot than some of Dickens's other novels, Hard Times provides an intimate look at a changing economy and an important commentary on the philosophies of the times. Mary Whipple

Always concerned with issues of class, social injustice, and employment, Dickens shows in Hard Times, written in 1854, a broader concern with the philosophies and economic movements which underlie those issues. Three parallel story lines reflect a broad cross-section of society and its thinking.

Mr. Thomas Gradgrind runs a school founded upon the principles of rationalism, a belief in the importance of facts, the antithesis of romantic "fancy" and imagination. Basically a good man, he denies the importance of emotion--for himself, his children, and his students. Only Student #20, Sissy Jupe, the daughter of a circus clown, fails to conform to his notions, and in a hilarious, satiric scene at the beginning of the novel, Dickens shows the absurdity of Gradgrind's teachings.

Gradgrind's friend, Mr. Bounderby, is a banker and factory owner, aged fifty, who claims to have risen from the gutter to his present lofty position through hard work. Bounderby treats the employees of his Coketown factory as machines, rather than as humans, and his eventual marriage to the teenaged Louisa Gradgrind is seen by both as a marriage of "tangible fact," having nothing to do with affection.

The third story line involves Stephen Blackpool, a worker in Bounderby's factory, trapped in a marriage to an alcoholic who periodically appears and extorts money from him. Stephen is in love with Rachael, an adoring factory worker, but his appeal to Bounderby for help in ending his marriage is met with cold, rational pronouncements. Shortly after, Bounderby fires Stephen "for a novelty," forcing him to seek employment elsewhere.

As the story lines overlap and intersect, often with consummate irony, Dickens keeps a light enough hand to prevent the story from becoming a polemic, though his criticism of hypocrisy, corruption, and "progress" at the expense of humanity is clear. His humor, often dark, keeps the plot moving, and several of his characters, which are often caricatures, do grow and change. Characteristically, Dickens uses names symbolically-Gradgrind grinds the emotions from his graduates, hires Mr. M'Choakumchild as a teacher, and lives at Stone Lodge. Mr. Bounderby proves to be a bounder. Some of the circus performers, like Sissy, live at Pegasus Arms.

The dramatic conclusion, which involves the pursuit of an innocent character widely believed to have committed a robbery, draws all the themes together, showing the parallels, contrasts, and ironies which connect these characters, regardless of their social level. Less epic in plot than some of Dickens's other novels, Hard Times provides an intimate look at a changing economy and an important commentary on the philosophies of the times. Mary Whipple

Considered by 19th century critics to be one of Dickens' more artistic and literary triumphs, Hard Times can be viewed in present time as a blistering polemic against the rise of industrial society and the dominate philosophy that rose in tandem with the industrial age, utilitarianism
It is well known that Dickens was a chronicler of his times, and his mode of expression, the novel. An intensely emotional individual, Dickens was known to be a power walker, starting in the afternoon, covering miles, to return home just before sunrise. It was during these extensive walks that he witnessed the utter poverty and squalor scattered throughout the streets of London. These walks brought inspiration for many of his novels, particularly, Hard Times.
In this novel, Dickens explores the applications of utilitarianism in its highly rational, and in many ways, brutal forms. The novels general theme is that a philosophy that is only concerned with happiness and survival for the majority, will attempt to quash any and all individual thought and effort. Individual ideas, emotion, imagination and creativity must be ruthlessly rejected in order for the majority of people to think alike, work alike and behave alike to attain a status quo of happiness for all. Rationality must prevail because imagination promotes individuality, which is anathema to mob concerns.
This polemic against utilitarianism is expressed clearly and persuasively in the practice of education. In the opening chapter for example, `The One Thing Needful", the reader is introduced to this dictatorial emphasis on the rational:
"Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will be of any service to them." (p. 47)
Romanticism was now on the wane and utilitarianism and the rise of rationalism infiltrated every aspect of 19th century industrial life - emotion has no place in capitalism - the masses are reduced to statistics.
Dickens main point in writing Hard Times, I believe, was to illustrate the brutality of the applications of the philosophy, utilitarianism, and the destructive results it entails when humaneness, the vital aspect of our nature, is ignored completely. Dickens was reporting, and speaking against a potentially destructive sway in society away from basic humanity and the importance of the individual, towards the highly mechanical and rational `mob' philosophy of Utilitarianism during the Industrial revolution.
In our so-called modern times, Dickens message continues to be relevant. Our societies emphasis on rationalism and the exclusion of emotion, can only lead to destruction. A balance must be found.

Despite the explicit title, "Hard Times" is not so much an ode to poverty and misery as it is a commentary on the increasing impact of industrialization on the fragmentation of society and on the dehumanization of education. The result, as Dickens implies, leads to lives hollowed by the emptiness of work for work's sake and wealth for wealth's sake.
The setting is Coketown, a factory town befouled by industrial smog and populated by underpaid and undereducated laborers. The novel's most prominent character is one of the town's richest citizens, Josiah Bounderby, a pompous blowhard who owns a textile mill and a bank and whose conversation usually includes some boastful story about his impoverished childhood and the hard work that led to his present fortune.
Bounderby is the commercial projection of Thomas Gradgrind, a local schoolteacher and an extraordinarily pragmatic man who instills in his students and his own children the importance of memorizing facts and figures and the iniquity of indulging in entertaining activities. Gradgrind offers to Bounderby his son, Tom Jr., as an unwilling apprentice, and his daughter, Louisa, as an unwilling bride.
On the other end of the town's social scale is Stephen Blackpool, a simple, downcast man who works as a weaver at Bounderby's mill and slogs through life misunderstood and mistreated. When he refuses to join his fellow workers in a labor uprising, he is ostracized; when he criticizes the economic disparity between Bounderby and the workers, he is fired and forced to leave town; when Bounderby's bank is robbed one night, he is suspected as the thief. So halfway through the novel, Dickens grants his reader an interesting, albeit somewhat contrived, plot element to embellish the narrative.
If this novel contains a ray of sunshine, it is in Sissy Jupe, a girl abandoned by her father and adopted by Gradgrind, whose oppressive educational method nearly breaks her. However, she grows up with her own intuitive sense of propriety, which she uses as a tool to eject a dishonorable character from the novel. Her strong and independent spirit will allow her to do much better in life than Louisa, who withers away in an unhappy marriage, and Tom Jr., whose boredom renders him vulnerable to temptations.
Compared to his other novels, "Hard Times" is relatively short and straightforward and has few characters, as though Dickens felt that what he had to say was so important, it had to be said quickly and bluntly. He is less interested in realism than in making a point, and it's really the poetic power of his prose that enables him to get away with the overbearing sentimentality and often ridiculous caricatures that accompany his poignant human truths.

Sometimes (particularly during Hard Times) one doesn't know what to make of Charles Dickens, the Victorian Age's preeminent social critic and its most prolific writer. Spurred by his own experience in a workhouse and his family humiliation in debtor's prison the author clearly is outraged by the abuse and the indecent exploitation of children, women, and the poor. Hard Times, Bleak House and Oliver Twist are all a testament to the author's humanity. Unfortunately, they aren't always a testament to great writing.

By all appearances, Hard Times should be a joy. At less than 300 pages it is by far Dicken's shortest full length novel, unencumbered by the bloat of better loved classics. Why then did I find it so much more tedious than far longer works? In a word--cliche. Hard Times doesn't have a single character that isnt a one dimensional caricature. Characters are about as nuanced as villains tying virgins to the track, twirling their mustache and rubbing their hands together in glee. Bounderby, Sissy, Tom and Gradgrind are all either dastardly, duped, doltish or drudges.

Louisa Gradgrind threatens to be interesting but is riven by social custom before ever doing so, and Stephen Blackpool's miserable marriage to a drunkard is a rather slanderous mirror to the author's own unhappy union. Heavy handed comparison between city folk and circus folk (that's right--the circus) result in acrobatic eye rolling on the reader's part, and I think you can all figure out which group enjoys life most.

Hard Times was dashed off to bolster the serialization of another work not faring very well and it has the whiff of hurry and hack job about it. But as I said at the outset, Dicken's is, if nothing else a thoroughly decent fellow. So I prefer to think of Hard Times as a sort of country music album from an old master--full of hardship, heartache and hard knocks. If you feel less generous deduct a star and call it a corny cliche.

The fact that Dickens wrote "Hard Times" in weekly installments, more than probably means that there was a time and space constraint. It must not be a coincidence then that this is among his shortest novels. I suppose this is why at times, his characters wind up being caricaturesque, and not as complex and real as some of his other very memorable characters. By the same token, some of his subplots do not fit in to the main plot the way they do in most, if not all, of his other works.

Dickens is trying to explore and provide us with a picture of the effects of utilitarianism on different types of human characters, and in my opinion he does a good job, but only as far as individuals go. We can see the impact of the post romantic victorian social system on all of the novel's characters, and this makes the book interesting. The downside, however, is that when Dickens tries to extrapolate and paint a picture of the social struggle going on, he falls quite short. He tries to oversimplify too much, and in my opinion, fails at that.

The "nothing but Facts" system psychologically castrates most of the main characters in the book. In one way or another, they all have their share of "Hard Times", and this can surely be attributed to a dehumanizing system, where people are statistics or simply gears within the machine which represents the newly industrialized world.

It is no surprise that there are absolutely no happy people in this novel. This is definitely not one happy book, but overall it's really worth reading. If what you're looking for is a book that easy to read and to understand, and a page-turner, just stay away--read John Grisham instead ;-). If you want to read Dickens, this is more that probably not his best, but it's still good.

HARD TIMES has its own special place in world literature, even as it does in Dickens's own oeuvre. Its brevity contrasts with the longer works for which Dickens is more famous, and its satiric skewering of rampant capitalism leaves an imprint on the reader's mind not soon forgotten.
Dickens holds up Thomas Gradgrind for us, Sir, a singular member of the industrial community of "Coketown," a man who is so obsessed with Facts that he never allows his children to Feel. They are to "discard the word Fancy altogether." To ensure this strict materialistic philosophy, the children are taught by a schoolmaster named "McChoakumchild." In Gradgrind's friend Josiah Bounderby Dickens gives us possibly the most layered, complete and abhorrent hypocrite in all of English literature. Moliere's Tartuffe is the height of sincerity compared with Bounderby, who seems really to have convinced himself of his own myth after many years of browbeating others with his pompous false modesty. The fact that he is a factory owner who mercilessly exploits his workers only makes him the less endearing. And this is the man Tom Gradgrind gives his daughter to in marriage!
The book's narrator clearly distinguishes the good guys from the bad guys, all in an effective effort to show that humans need to appreciate sentiment and sympathy much more than they need to worship dollars and cents. In 1854 HARD TIMES showed the triumphalist British industrialists their dark side. It stands today as a treasured statement against cost-benefit ratios and anti-intellectualism in a world where CEOs "earn" $10 million bonuses the same week 4,000 workers lose their jobs. It will stand tomorrow anywhere people are scorned for showing their feelings, beaten down in body and spirit, or victimized by rank injustice.