Hard Times (Vintage Classics)

ISBN: 0307947203

Author: Dickens, Charles

Condition: New

The shortest of Charles Dickenss 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 authors 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.