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  • Published: 1 January 1981
  • ISBN: 9780553210163
  • Imprint: Bantam Dell
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 320
  • RRP: $12.99

Hard Times




The new paperback series: Penguin English Library

Written deliberately to increase the circulation of Dickens’s weekly magazine, Household Words, Hard Times was a huge and instantaneous success upon publication in 1854. Yet this novel is not the cheerful celebration of Victorian life one might have expected from the beloved author of The Pickwick Papers and The Old Curiosity Shop. Compressed, stark, allegorical, it is a bitter exposé of capitalist exploitation during the industrial revolution–and a fierce denunciation of the philosophy of materialism, which threatens the human imagination in all times and places. With a typically unforgettable cast of characters–including the heartless fact-worshipper
Mr. Gradgrind, the warmly endearing Sissy Jupe, and the eternally noble Stephen Blackpool–Hard Times carries a uniquely powerful message and remains one of the most widely read of Dickens’s major novels.

  • Published: 1 January 1981
  • ISBN: 9780553210163
  • Imprint: Bantam Dell
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 320
  • RRP: $12.99

Other books in the series

Emma
Persuasion
A Dog's Heart
The Black Tulip
The Lady of the Camellias
Selected Poetry
On Sparta
Man and Superman
Saint Joan
Botchan
Kusamakura
Sanshiro
Love
Annals
Military Dispatches

About the author

Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens was born in Hampshire on February 7, 1812. His father was a clerk in the navy pay office, who was well paid but often ended up in financial troubles. When Dickens was twelve years old he was send to work in a shoe polish factory because his family had been taken to the debtors' prison. His career as a writer of fiction started in 1833 when his short stories and essays began to appear in periodicals. The Pickwick Papers, his first commercial success, was published in 1836. The serialisation of Oliver Twist began in 1837. Many other novels followed and The Old Curiosity Shop brought Dickens international fame and he became a celebrity in America as well as Britain. Charles Dickens died on 9 June 1870. He is buried in Westminster Abbey.

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