Hard Times

For the 1975 movie starring Charles Bronson, see Hard Times (1975 film)

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Hard Times is a novel by Charles Dickens, published in 1854. It is significant for being 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. The novel is unusual, in that it is not set in London, as is Dickens' usual wont, but the fictitious Victorian industrial town of Coketown. It has met mixed critical response from a diverse range of critics, such F.R. Leavis, George Bernard Shaw, and Thomas Macaulay. This was usually for Dickens' treatment of Trade unions, and the pessimism about the division between capitalistic millowners and the undervalued workers, after the Industrial Revolution, set in the Victorian era of Great Britain.

Related Topics:
Novel - Charles Dickens - 1854 - North and South - Elizabeth Gaskell - F.R. Leavis - George Bernard Shaw - Thomas Macaulay - Trade unions - Industrial Revolution - Victorian era - Great Britain

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