Charles Dickens Hard Times

Even after two hundred years, Charles Dickens' rapier-sharp criticism of industrial England seems thought provoking and relevant to our times.

Dickens's tenth novel, Hard Times describes the social and economic conditions of the mid-nineteenth century.

Appalled at the working conditions prevalent at the outset of the Industrial Revolution in towns such as Manchester and Preston, he endeavored to "strike the heaviest blow" in his power to educate his readers.

His vision was dismal and dark, a...