HARD TIMES

It depicts Coktown,a typical red-brick industrial city of the morth.In its schools and factories children and adults are caged and endlaved,with no personal freedom until their spirit is broken.Against this social backdrop where harsh regimes are enforced by the likes of Josiah Bounderby,the pompous self0amde man,and Gradgrind,the censorious disciplinarian,the personal tragedies of Louisa Gradgrind and Stephen Blackpool are played out.
Despite its vivid portrait of the horrors of the newly nechanized society,Hard Times is shot through with a wit,good humour and a conviction that entertainment is shot through with a wit,good humour and a conviction that entertainment is essntial for human hapiness,making it one of the most uplifting of Dickens's novels.


作者简介：
Charles Dickens(1812-70).Best known for his host of distinctively cruel,comic and repugnant characters,Charles Dickens remains the most widely read of the Victorian novelists.
Set in the fictional Coketown,which is partly based on Dickens's experiences of Preston,Hard Times(1854)has a strong social theme.In it ,he highlights the plight of the men,women and childrem whose lives were thrown into turmoil by the Industrial Revolution of the 1840s.

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(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)

By 1854, when Hard Times was published, Charles Dickens' magisterial progress as a writer had come to incorporate a many-sided, coherent vision of English society, both as it was and as he wished it to be. Hard Times. a classic Dickensian story of redemption set in a North of England town beset by industrialism, everywhere benefits from this vision - in the trenchancy of its satire, in its sweeping indignation at social injustice, and in the persistent humanity with which its author enlivens his largest and smallest incidents. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Graham Law is an associate professor of English Studies at Waseda University, Japan. Law is widely published on the subject of nineteenth-century suspense novels and also the editor of two other Broadview Literary Texts series editions: Great Expectations (with Adrian Pinnington) and The Evil Genius. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

BOOK THE FIRST.SOWING
CHAPTER
I.THE ONE THING NEEDFUL
II.MURDERING THE INNOCENTS
III.A LOOPHOLE
IV.MR.BOUNDERBY
V.THE DEY-NOTE
VI.SLEARY'S HORSEMANSHIP
VII.MRS.SPARSIT
VIII.NEVER WONDER
IX.SISSY'S PROGERSS
X.STEPHEN BLACKPOOL
XI.ON WAY OUT
XII.THE OLD WOMAN
XIII.RACHAEL
XIV.THE GREAT MANUFACTURER
XV.FATHER AND DAUGHTER
XVI.HUSBAND AND WIFE
BOOK THE SECOND.REAPING
I.EFFECTS IN THE BANK
II.MR.JAMES HARTHOUSE
III.THE WHELP
IV.MEN AND BROTHERS
V.MEN AND MASTERS
VI.FADING AWAY
VII.GUNPOWDER
VIII.EXPLOSION
IX.HEARING THE LAST OF IT
X.MRS.SPARSIT'S STAIRCISE
XI.LOWER AND LOWER
XII.KOWN
BOOK THE THIRD.GRANERING
CHAPETR
I.ANOTHER THING NEEDFUL
II.VERY RIDICULOUS
III.VERY DECIDED
IV.LOST
V.FOUND
VI.THE STARLIGHT
VII.WHELR-HUNTING
VIII.PHILOSOPHICAL
IX.FINAL