Hard Times (Paperback - 2022)

“Let us strike the keynote, Coketown, before pursuing our tune... It was a town of machines and tall chimneys, out of which interminable serpents of smoke trailed themselves for ever, and never got uncoiled...” — Hard Times The novel is set in the imaginary industrial town of Coketown. With a typically unforgettable cast of characters – the hard-headed fact-worshipper Professor Gradgrind, the heartless factory owner Bounderby, the warmly endearing Sissy Jupe and the eternally noble Stephen Blackpool – Hard Times carries uniquely powerful message and remains one of the most widely read of Dickens’ major novels. It is a bitter expose 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.

Charles Dickens (1812--1870) was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's most memorable fictional characters and is generally regarded as the greatest novelist of the Victorian period. His novels and short stories continue to be widely popular.