Hard Times

Hard Times is a novel by Charles Dickens, published in 1854. It is the shortest of his full novels.

The book is one of a number of state-of-the-nation novels published around the same time, another being North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell, which aimed to highlight the social and economic pressures some people were under. It takes place in Coketown, a fictionalised view of Preston, which Dickens had recently visited.

Although extremely popular when first written—it doubled the circulation of Household Words, the journal in which it was serialized—the book is now almost a forgotten part of the Dickens canon. Part of the reason for its lack of popularity now is that it is a political polemic with little of the characterisation or humour which Dickens is famed for. Thomas Macaulay called it "sullen socialism" but it is clear that Dickens did not fully comprehend the politics of the time. One reason it is not highly regarded is that it was written in weekly instalments and even for the prolific Dickens this is a hectic pace to produce fiction.

External links

• Hard Times - in easy to read HTML format.