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Hard Times [Norton Critical Edition]

by Charles Dickens

Other authors: Fred Kaplan (Editor), Sylvère Monod (Editor)

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744429,948 (3.55)None
"Set in Coketown, the fictitious English mill-town modeled after Preston, Hard Times follows the stories of Thomas Gradgrind, a wealthy mill owner, his family, and the poor mill workers in the town. The storylines of Gradgrind's children, Louisa, Tom, and Sissy, run parallel to the troubles of the hard workers struggling to survive in a time of severe inequality. This Norton Critical Edition is based on the 1854 first edition, with new edits made to encompass more recent scholarly findings. The text comes paired with explanatory footnotes, illustrations and photographs depicting the scenes of the novel in contrast with their historical counterparts, and an introduction by the editor that brings Hard Times into a twenty-first century analysis on the social, economic, and political themes of the novel. "Contexts" carries over most of the contextual materials that help a modern reader acclimate to the harsh realities of mid-nineteenth century industrial England. "Criticism" brings together eighteen essays on Hard Times, five of which were seen in the third edition by Taine, Ruskin, Gissing, Leavis, and Shaw. New essays by Christopher Barnes, Christine Lupton, Victor Sage, Efraim Sicher, and Nils Clausson reexamine the novel as literary art, while Tamar Ketabgian, Kent Greenfield and John E. Nilsson, David M. Levy, Paulette Kidder, Martha Nussbaum, David Lodge, David L. Cowles, and Theodore Dalrymple provide perspectives ranging from the connections to the natural world to the study of law and the word of human experience in between. A Chronology and revised Selected Bibliography are also included."--… (more)
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Showing 3 of 3
I read this for an online reading discussion group. Overall, I would say that the first two thirds was awful and the last third was somewhat better.

My biggest complaint about this book is that I found the characters neither interesting nor believable nor worthy of being cared about. This surprised me because (I gather) Dickens is known for his characterization. The characters felt like caricatures, almost like he was writing a morality play.

I haven't read Dickens since my teens and college years. I have vague but generally positive memories of his novels (with Bleak House being the one that sticks out most in my memory). I thought that I had read this one before but if so I have no memory of the story (although I did guess immediately that the old woman was Bounderby's mother, so perhaps I was unconsciously remembering that plot detail from a prior read).

Oddly enough, I have much more vivid memories of reading John Stuart Mill (against whose Utilitarianism this book is squarely aimed) than I do of the Dickens I read during that same period. ( )
  clong | Apr 25, 2014 |
I once took a class on Dickens and this was the best book I read for the class. I actually wrote a paper about it called "Fire and the Absence of Fancy" that focused mainly on the character Louisa Gradgrind, who spends a great deal of her time gazing into fires.
In this book Dickens shows the disturbing effects industrialization and human mechanization can have on the lives of workers and children. The world the characters inhabit is very bleak; the air is polluted with smoke because the fires keeping the machines going are never extinguished, the imaginations of children are crushed in the name of progress, and there is no time for pleasure. While the tone of the book can be very dark, there are also truly hilarious moments—especially the bit about the horses on the wallpaper (in school the children are told that a wallpaper covered in horses is unrealistic because horses can't live on wallpaper). I think this book contains some of the most fascinating characters Dickens ever wrote (except for Miss Havisham) and some of the most scathing economic and social commentary to be found in any of his books.
A lot of people in the Dickens class disagreed with me and said that Hard Times couldn't possibly be as good as Bleak House because Bleak House was a very longggg book and Hard Times is too short to be considered amongst his best work. Huh? It didn’t seem like a legitimate argument to me but they used it just the same. It has long been rumored that Dickens was paid a penny for each word he penned, which, in my opinion, is the only rational explanation for why Bleak House is as long as it is. ( )
1 vote DameMuriel | Aug 13, 2008 |
I was assigned to read this book for two different courses in college, and was unable to finish it either time.
  Othemts | Jul 9, 2008 |
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Author nameRoleType of authorWork?Status
Charles Dickensprimary authorall editionscalculated
Kaplan, FredEditorsecondary authorall editionsconfirmed
Monod, SylvèreEditorsecondary authorall editionsconfirmed

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"Set in Coketown, the fictitious English mill-town modeled after Preston, Hard Times follows the stories of Thomas Gradgrind, a wealthy mill owner, his family, and the poor mill workers in the town. The storylines of Gradgrind's children, Louisa, Tom, and Sissy, run parallel to the troubles of the hard workers struggling to survive in a time of severe inequality. This Norton Critical Edition is based on the 1854 first edition, with new edits made to encompass more recent scholarly findings. The text comes paired with explanatory footnotes, illustrations and photographs depicting the scenes of the novel in contrast with their historical counterparts, and an introduction by the editor that brings Hard Times into a twenty-first century analysis on the social, economic, and political themes of the novel. "Contexts" carries over most of the contextual materials that help a modern reader acclimate to the harsh realities of mid-nineteenth century industrial England. "Criticism" brings together eighteen essays on Hard Times, five of which were seen in the third edition by Taine, Ruskin, Gissing, Leavis, and Shaw. New essays by Christopher Barnes, Christine Lupton, Victor Sage, Efraim Sicher, and Nils Clausson reexamine the novel as literary art, while Tamar Ketabgian, Kent Greenfield and John E. Nilsson, David M. Levy, Paulette Kidder, Martha Nussbaum, David Lodge, David L. Cowles, and Theodore Dalrymple provide perspectives ranging from the connections to the natural world to the study of law and the word of human experience in between. A Chronology and revised Selected Bibliography are also included."--

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