Hard Times is the tenth novel by Charles Dickens, first published in 1854. It describes nineteenth-century England and satirises the social and economic conditions of the era.
Hard Times is unusual in several ways. It is the shortest of Dickens's novels, only just a quarter of the length of
those written immediately before and after it. Also, unlike all but one of
his other novels, Hard Times has neither a preface nor
illustrations. Moreover, it is his only novel not to have scenes set in
London. Instead the story is set in the fictitious (=fictional,
imaginary) Victorian industrial Coketown, a generic Northern English
mill-town, in some ways similar to Manchester, though smaller.
One of Dickens's reasons for writing Hard Times was
that sales of his weekly periodical Household Words were low,
and it was hoped the novel's publication in instalments would boost circulation
– as indeed proved to be the case.
Since publication it has received a mixed response from critics. Critics such as George Bernard Shaw have mainly focused on Dickens's treatment of trade unions and his post–Industrial Revolution pessimism regarding the divide between capitalist mill owners and undervalued workers during the Victorian era. Read here.
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