Hard Times
By Charles Dickens
Cover: Applicants for Admission to a Casual Ward (1874), oil on canvas by Luke Fildes (1843-1927) · Wikimedia Commons · Public domain (artist died 1927)
Hard Times: For These Times (commonly known as Hard Times) is the tenth novel by English author Charles Dickens, first published in 1854. The book surveys English society and satirises its social and economic conditions. Hard Times is unusual in several ways. It is by far the shortest of Dickens's novels, barely a quarter of the length of those written immediately before and after it. Also, unlike all but one of his other novels, Hard Times has neither a preface nor illustrations. Moreover, it is his only novel without scenes set in London.
Summary source: Wikipedia: Hard Times (novel) · CC BY-SA 4.0
Table of contents
- 1: The One Thing Needful
- 2: Murdering the Innocents
- 3: A Loophole
- 4: Mr. Bounderby
- 5: The Keynote
- 6: Sleary’s Horsemanship
- 7: Mrs. Sparsit
- 8: Never Wonder
- 9: Sissy’s Progress
- 10: Stephen Blackpool
- 11: No Way Out
- 12: The Old Woman
- 13: Rachael
- 14: The Great Manufacturer
- 15: Father and Daughter
- 16: Husband and Wife
- 17: Effects in the Bank
- 18: Mr. James Harthouse
- 19: The Whelp
- 20: Men and Brothers
- 21: Men and Masters
- 22: Fading Away
- 23: Gunpowder
- 24: Explosion
- 25: Hearing the Last of It
- 26: Mrs. Sparsit’s Staircase
- 27: Lower and Lower
- 28: Down
- 29: Another Thing Needful
- 30: Very Ridiculous
- 31: Very Decided
- 32: Lost
- 33: Found
- 34: The Starlight
- 35: Whelp-Hunting
- 36: Philosophical
- 37: Final