Hard Times

The shortest of Charles Dickens's novels, Hard Times is also his most pointed and impassioned satire of social injustice.

Set in Coketown, a fictional industrial town in the north of England, Hard Times was born of its author's indignation at the soul-crushing conditions of the industrial age, and yet it vibrantly transcends the stock situations and polemical weaknesses typical of social protest fiction of the time. The indelible characters--Mr. Gradgrind, whose utilitarian educational philosophy emotionally cripples his own children; the hypocritical factory owner Josiah Bounderby; Stephen Blackpool, an honest worker wrongly accused of a crime; and Sissy Jupe, a circus performer whose father abandons her to what he hopes is a better life--all come alive in classic Dickensian fashion, and contribute to a satiric vision of society tempered equally by righteous anger and compassionate humanity.

Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 01/10/2012
ISBN: 9780307947208
Pages: 288
Weight: 0.65lbs
Size: 7.90h x 5.10w x 0.70d
Accelerated Reader Quiz #/Name: 50672 / Hard Times
Reading Level: 9.3 / Interest Level: Upper Grade / Point Value: 20