′It was a town of red brick, or of brick that would have been red if the smoke and ashes had allowed it; but as matters stood, it was a town of unnatural red and black like the painted face of a savag
Introduction and Notes by Dinny Thorold, University of Westminster. Illustrated by F. Walker and Maurice Greiffenhagen.Unusually for Dickens, Hard Times is set, not in London, but in the imaginary mid
A novel of social and moral themes, Hard Times is the archetypal Dickens novel, filled with family difficulties, estrangement, rotten values and unhappiness. Published in 1854, it is set in the imagin
The backdrop to this campaigning novel is the grim industrial centre of Coketown, with its belching chimneys, purple-dyed river and hordes of downtrodden mill hands. Here headmaster Thomas Gradgrind s
