Hard Times | Hard Times

At a glance:

Author: Charles Dickens
First Published: 1854
Type of Work: Novel
Type of Plot: Social realism
Time of Work: Mid-nineteenth century
Setting: England
Genres: Long fiction, Social realism
Subjects: Teaching or teachers, Values, Nineteenth century, Social issues, Education or educators, Mistaken or secret identity, England or English people, Robbery or robbers, Politicians, Reformers, Labor unions, Satire, Victorian era or Victorianism
Locales: England

Thomas Gradgrind, a retired hardware merchant and the founder of an experimental school where only facts and proved scientific laws are taught. A firm believer that “two and two are four, and nothing over,” he is the father of five unhappy fact-finders and the husband of an ailing, dispirited woman quite worn out from the facts of life. While he is essentially a kind and good man, his excessive attention to the scientific and the practical and his total neglect of the imaginative and the speculative make him a kind of bumbling ogre. Through...

Hard Times | Hard Times

At a glance:

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