SOURCE: "Hard Times and F. R. Leavis," in Criticism, Vol. 6, No. 1, Winter, 1964, pp. 1-16.
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 History and a Criticism" (1962). Hirsch finds Hard Times "One of the dullest and least successful" of Dickens's works, despite the author's "most commendable" purpose.
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