Hard Times by Charles Dickens (ebooks that read to you txt) π
Description
Hard Times (originally Hard TimesβFor These Times) was published in 1854, and is the shortest novel Charles Dickens ever published. Itβs set in Coketown, a fictional mill-town set in the north of England. One of the major themes of the book is the miserable treatment of workers in the mills, and the resistance to their unionization by the mill owners, typified by the character Josiah Bounderby, who absurdly asserts that the workers live a near-idyllic life but they all βexpect to be set up in a coach and six, and to be fed on turtle soup and venison, with a gold spoon.β The truth, of course, is far different.
The other major topic which Dickens tackles in this novel is the rationalist movement in schooling and the denigration of imagination and fantasy. It begins with the words βNow, what I want is, Facts,β spoken by the wealthy magnate Thomas Gradgrind, who is supervising a class at a model school he has opened. This indeed is Gradgrindβs entire philosophy. βTeach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else.β He is supported and encouraged in this approach by his friend Bounderby. Grandgrind raises his own children on these principles, and, as we discover, in doing so blights their lives.
The novel also follows the story of a particular mill-worker, Stephen Blackpool, who leads a tragic life. He is burdened with an alcoholic, slatternly wife, who is mostly absent from his life, but who returns at irregular intervals to trouble him. This existing marriage, and the near-impossibility of divorce for someone of his class, prevents him marrying Rachael, who is the light of his life. Dickens depicts Stephen as representing the nobility of honest work, and contrasts his character with that of the self-satisfied humbug Josiah Bounderby who represents the worst aspects of capitalism.
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- Author: Charles Dickens
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Hard Times
was published in 1854 by
Charles Dickens.
This ebook was produced for
Standard Ebooks
by
David Grigg,
and is based on a transcription produced in 1997 by
David Price
for
Project Gutenberg
and on digital scans available at the
Internet Archive.
The cover page is adapted from
Black Country,
a painting completed in about 1880 by
Constantin Meunier.
The cover and title pages feature the
League Spartan and Sorts Mill Goudy
typefaces created in 2014 and 2009 by
The League of Moveable Type.
The first edition of this ebook was released on
October 2, 2018, 12:05 a.m.
You can check for updates to this ebook, view its revision history, or download it for different ereading systems at
standardebooks.org/ebooks/charles-dickens/hard-times.
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