Hard Times by Charles Dickens

Hard Times by Charles Dickens

Dickens's scathing portrait of Victorian industrial society.

Coketown, the depressed mill town that is the setting for one of Charles Dickens's most powerful and unforgettable novels, is all brick, machinery, and smoke-darkened chimneys. Its emblematic citizen, the schoolmaster Thomas Gradgrind, lives to impose his version of education- facts and statistics that feed the mind while starving the soul and spirit. Inflexible and unyielding, he places conformity above curiosity and logic over sentiment, only to see his philosophy warp and destroy the lives of his own family.

Filled with memorable characters and scenes, Hard Times is a daring novel of ideas-and, ultimately, a celebration of love, hope, and imagination.

With an Introduction by Frederick Busch
and an Afterword by Jane Smiley

Dickens, Charles: -

Charles Dickens (1812-1870) has been remembered in history as one of the greatest authors of the Victorian era. Not only having received tremendous success while he was alive, Charles Dickens' work continues to be read as voraciously as when it was first published. Because of his tremendous popularity, Charles Dickens has secured himself the position of not only being one of the greatest writers of his generation, but one of the most celebrated writers of all time. In addition to his writing, Charles Dickens was a prominent activist, dedicating much of his life to fighting for better social conditions for the poor as well as powerfully advocating for better laws to protect the rights of children. When a piece of literature refers to either unfair working and living conditions, or else portrays the state of a morally corrupt social class, the writing is thus referred to as Dickensian. Much of literary traditions thus owe their inspiration from the writing of Charles Dickens.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780451530998
ISBN 10	0451530993
Title	Hard Times
Author	Charles Dickens
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Signet
Year published	2008-07-01
Number of pages	336
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.