Hard Times (And Other Stories)

When "Hard Times" appeared as a serial in Household Words in 1854, Dickens was about midway in his literary career. In the same year this novel appeared in an octavo volume with a dedication to Thomas Carlyle. Its purpose, according to Dickens himself, was to satirize "those who see figures and averages and nothing else—the representatives of the wickedest and most enormous vice of this time — the men who through long years to come will do more to damage the really useful facts of Political...