Written deliberately to increase the circulation of Dickens’s weekly magazine, Household Words, Hard Times was a huge and instantaneous success upon publication in 1854. Yet this novel is not the cheerful celebration of Victorian life one might have expected from the beloved author of The Pickwick Papers and The Old Curiosity Shop. Compressed, stark, allegorical, it is a bitter exposé of capitalist exploitation during the industrial revolution–and a fierce denunciation of the philosophy of materialism, which threatens the human imagination in all times and places. With a typically unforgettable cast of characters–including the heartless fact-worshipper
Mr. Gradgrind, the warmly endearing Sissy Jupe, and the eternally noble Stephen Blackpool–Hard Times carries a uniquely powerful message and remains one of the most widely read of Dickens’s major novels.
- ISBN10 0553210165
- ISBN13 9780553210163
- Publish Date 1 March 1981
- Publish Status Active
- Out of Print 24 November 2015
- Publish Country US
- Publisher Random House USA Inc
- Imprint Bantam Books Inc
- Format Paperback (US Mass Market)
- Pages 320
- Language English
- URL https://penguinrandomhouse.com/books/isbn/9780553210163