Hard Times Summary
Charles Dickens

Biography EssayThe life story of Charles Dickens is, from several perspectives, a success story. Generally regarded today as one of the greatest novelists in the English language, Dickens had the unus... Read more

He was only fifty-eight when he died. His horse had been shot, as he had wanted; his body lay in a casket in his home at Gad's Hill, festooned with scarlet geraniums. Tributes poured in from all over ... Read more

Charles Dickens had one thing in common with his creation Thomas Gradgrind, the heartless utilitarian in Hard Times: a love of facts. Along with fourteen novels, many of them rich in topical allusion,... Read more

From the appearance of his first full-length work of prose fiction, The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, in 1836-1837, Charles Dickens has retained his place as one of the best-loved and most... Read more

Ruskin was an English critic, essayist, historian, poet, novella writer, autobiographer, and diarist. Endowed with a passion for reforming what he considered his "blind and wandering fellow-men... Read more

In the essay below, Cockshut seeks to demonstrate—contra F. R. Leavis—that Hard Times is not Dickens's masterpiece. He does, however, consider it a novel of high accomplishment. ... Read more

The essay below represents one of the two most notable critical responses to F. R. Leavis's seminal 1948 essay on Hard Times, the other being John Holloway's "Hard Times: A Histor... Read more

In the following essay, Sonstroem identifies conflict between Fact—dry statistics and empirical definitions—and Fancy—variously identified with imagination, romance, wonder, and n... Read more

In the following excerpt, Barnard discusses Dickens's treatment of industrial unrest and his characterizations of Gradgrind and Bounderby in Hard Times. "I am afraid I shall not be a... Read more

Below, Whipple suggests that some representative assessments of Hard Times fail to consider "the distinction between Dickens as a creator of character and Dickens as a humorous satirist of what... Read more

In the excerpt below, Hardy examines Hard Times as one among several novels in which Dickens chose not to affirm a sure solution to the social problems he addressed. Hard Times, Little Dorrit, A Ta... Read more

Here, Fowler discusses Dickens's use of language and dialect in Hard Times as a tool for characterization and "unresolved ideological complexity. " The polarization of critical... Read more

In the essay below, Carr assesses Dickens's "sympathetic identification with feminine discourses in the 1850s" as exemplified in Hard Times. In his 1872 retrospective essay on ... Read more

Regarded as one of England's premier men of letters during the first half of the twentieth century, Chesterton is best known today as a colorful bon vivant, a witty essayist, Catholic apologist... Read more

A respected Canadian professor of economics, Leacock is best known as one of the leading humorists of the first half of the twentieth century. He is also the author of biographies of Twain and Dickens... Read more

Leavis was an influential twentieth-century English critic. His methodology combines close textual criticism with predominantly moral and social concerns; however, Leavis is not interested in the indi... Read more

Solutions to Singularity and Industrialization In an attempt to propel the quality and way of life forward by means of efficiency and advancement of technology, industrialization destroys many intrin... Read more

This character is one of the negative ones in this book. He is cruel and selfish. I think that by ¡§painting¡¨ Tom, the author, Charles Dickens, shows the impact of factual childho... Read more

Charles Dickens was a Victorian sardonic writer who wrote social criticisms about Victorian England. In the first seven chapters of the novel I think Charles Dickens is criticising several issues part... Read more

"The Key-Note," which is Chapter 5 of Book I of Charles Dickens's Hard Times, is full of imagery. Imagery is a collection of images in a literary work. Each sentence holds at least one image, all re... Read more