Product Description

Hard Times is Dickens's shortest novel, and arguably his greatest triumph. A useful appendix of the author's working notes, together with an enlightening introduction and full explanatory notes, will ensure that this edition becomes the obvious choice for anyone studying the novel. Paul Schlike is Lecturer in English at the University of Aberdeen.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #39234 in Books
• Published on: 1995-01-01
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 272 pages

Barry V. Qualls, Rutgers University
"Graham Law's edition of Hard Times is the most useful edition for teaching Dickens that I have seen."

Kate Flint, University of Oxford
"This is an excellent edition - clear, authoritative and stimulating."

Synopsis
This novel includes an introduction and notes by Dinny Thorold, University of Westminster and is illustrated by F. Walker and Maurice Greiffenhagen. Unusually for Dickens, "Hard Times" is set, not in London, but in the imaginary mid-Victorian Northern industrial town of Coketown with its blackened factories, downtrodden workers and polluted environment. This is the soulless domain of the strict utilitarian Thomas Gradgrind and the heartless factory owner Josiah Bounderby. However human joy is not excluded thanks to 'Mr Sleary's Horse-Riding' circus, a gin-soaked and hilarious troupe of open-hearted and affectionate people who act as an antidote to all the drudgery and misery endured by the ordinary citizens of Coketown.

Customer Reviews

Hard times ahead if you're reading this tome
I had to read this for GCSE in 1994 and it was a struggle from start to finish. It truly was 'hard times' reading this book, but something in it did appeal to me, because it didn't turn me off of Dickens. I have read further novels by him since - and not always because I have been forced to! There was a good TV series made of this book (the teacher made us watch it), with Bob Peck in it - that white hunter-type character from the first Jurassic Park film, who has since died, apparently.

Best Dickens that I have read
A fantastic read, with wonderfully descriptive moments. Very moving towards the end with a great ending.

Doesn't quite live up to its promise
This started off being very funny and quite promising, but seemed to lose its way rather. Although often thought of as a critique of the harshness of capitalism during the industrial revolution, this aspect forms more of a backdrop rather than imbuing the whole course of events as is the case with, for example, Ragged Trousered Philanthropists. Gradgrind, the ultimate right-brained individual who learns the value of emotional responses alongside purely rational ones, and the deferential and tragic labourer Stephen Blackpool, are the most interesting characters.