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Hard Times (Oxford World's Classics) [Paperback]

Charles Dickens , Paul Schlicke
3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (88 customer reviews)

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Book Description

July 15, 2008 Oxford World's Classics
Hard Times--Dickens's shortest novel and one of his triumphs--tells the tragic story of Louisa Gradgrind and her father and has had lasting appeal to generations of readers.

About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Frequently Bought Together

Hard Times (Oxford World's Classics) + A Tale of Two Cities (Dover Thrift Editions) + Great Expectations (Dover Thrift Editions)
Price for all three: $14.26

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Product Details

  • Paperback: 464 pages
  • Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (July 15, 2008)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0199536279
  • ISBN-13: 978-0199536276
  • Product Dimensions: 5.1 x 0.6 x 7.7 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (88 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #471,392 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Grade 7-12-Dickens' satire on the Victorian family and the philosophies of a society which sought to turn men into machines.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

David Timson reads Dickens's last complete novel with a sense of fun. As always, Dickens creates a fabulous array of characters: the nouveau riche Veneerings, the dwarf who makes doll clothes, the bizarre schoolmaster, and the abysmally poor who trawl the Thames for bodies or daily sift the dust and dirt of Victorian England for a skimpy living. Timson's dramatic talents add dimension to each personality-just the sort of acting that makes an audio experience so satisfying. Naxos has done a fine job of abridging the book (Timson also reads the unabridged version on 28 CDs). Not much is lost in terms of plot and characterization, and Dickens's great satiric and social themes come through clearly: the plight and misery of the poor and the greed and heartless stupidity of the rich. If the abridgment seems a bit disjointed, it simply follows the novel's narrative style. This is a wonderful listen for Dickens fans and novices alike. - Pulbisher's Weekly --This text refers to the Audio CD edition.

Product Details

  • Paperback: 464 pages
  • Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (July 15, 2008)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0199536279
  • ISBN-13: 978-0199536276
  • Product Dimensions: 5.1 x 0.6 x 7.7 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (88 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #471,392 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

I highly recommend this audio book as a great way to be introduced to Dicken's "Hard Times". Jeffrey Van Wagoner  |  13 reviewers made a similar statement
There is not too much depth to the characters and the pace of the story seems to go too fast. John( arden2@worldnet.att.net)  |  8 reviewers made a similar statement
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
48 of 52 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars Hardly a masterpiece, but brilliant at times February 20, 2004
Format:Mass Market Paperback
"Hard Times" belongs to the second half of Dickens's writing career, in which his work becomes rather more somber and, by common critical assent, more mature and satisfying. Personally, I prefer his earlier work and his very first novel, "Pickwick Papers", is to my mind his greatest. Surprisingly, "Hard Times", despite its title and reputation, contains some brilliant flashes of Dickens humour, especially in the earlier part. The descriptions of Bounderby and Gradgrind, and the early dialogue with the circus folk, are genuinely hilarious.

This is Dickens's shortest novel, about a third of the length of each of his previous four. Themes, subplots and characters are introduced without being fully explored. The author was perhaps feeling the constraints of writing in installments for a periodical, although he was well used to doing that. This relative brevity, together with the youth of some of the central characters, make this book a good introduction to Dickens for young readers.

There are the large dollops of Victorian melodrama and the reliance on unlikely coincidences that mar much of Dickens's work. Also the usual tendency for characters to become caricatures and to have names that are a little too apt (a teacher called Mr. McChoakumchild?).

The respected critic F.R. Leavis considered "Hard Times" to be Dickens's masterpiece and "only serious work of art". This seems to me wildly wrong, but such an extreme opinion may prompt you to read the book, just so that you can form your own opinion.

I read it because I had just finished "The Jungle" by Upton Sinclair, which deals with the plight of Chicago factory workers, and I wanted to compare the two. Sinclair's book has greater immediacy. It takes you much closer to the suffering of the workers.
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51 of 56 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars More Than Facts March 30, 2003
Format:Mass Market Paperback
I initially lamented the fact that Hard Times was assigned to me in my British lit. class. I had read some of Dickens's melodramas like A Tale of Two Cities and Oliver Twist and enjoyed them, but everything I heard about Hard Times said this was nothing like those. This was supposedly just strictly social commentary. My interpretation of that: BORING.

But then I read it.

Hard Times isn't like Dickens's other novels, but I don't think that it has any less heart than those masterpieces. In fact, Dickens endured himself much further to me with this novel as he has his characters perform Thomas Carlyle's enduring philosophy.

The novel follows the Gradgrind family who is raised adhering to FACTS and living in a society which worships the manufacturing machine. As the novel progresses, connections are made and broken, and the characters come to the realization that there is much more to reality than the material facts.

Hard Times is told so compassionately. The reader cares for these people and their tragic lives. The story is also told with biting humor that still cuts at today's society (this novel feels really modern), and the underlying philosophy is one which is so needed in our post-modern world. I would certainly recommend this novel to fans of Dickens and to fans of the truly literary novel.

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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars "Be in all things regulated and governed by fact..." October 3, 2005
Format:Mass Market Paperback
Always concerned with issues of class, social injustice, and employment, Dickens shows in Hard Times, written in 1854, a broader concern with the philosophies and economic movements which underlie those issues. Three parallel story lines reflect a broad cross-section of society and its thinking.

Mr. Thomas Gradgrind runs a school founded upon the principles of rationalism, a belief in the importance of facts, the antithesis of romantic "fancy" and imagination. Basically a good man, he denies the importance of emotion--for himself, his children, and his students. Only Student #20, Sissy Jupe, the daughter of a circus clown, fails to conform to his notions, and in a hilarious, satiric scene at the beginning of the novel, Dickens shows the absurdity of Gradgrind's teachings.

Gradgrind's friend, Mr. Bounderby, is a banker and factory owner, aged fifty, who claims to have risen from the gutter to his present lofty position through hard work. Bounderby treats the employees of his Coketown factory as machines, rather than as humans, and his eventual marriage to the teenaged Louisa Gradgrind is seen by both as a marriage of "tangible fact," having nothing to do with affection.

The third story line involves Stephen Blackpool, a worker in Bounderby's factory, trapped in a marriage to an alcoholic who periodically appears and extorts money from him. Stephen is in love with Rachael, an adoring factory worker, but his appeal to Bounderby for help in ending his marriage is met with cold, rational pronouncements. Shortly after, Bounderby fires Stephen "for a novelty," forcing him to seek employment elsewhere.
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25 of 30 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars BEAUTIFUL, SORROWFUL, AND HONEST July 7, 1998
By A Customer
Format:Mass Market Paperback
Dickens creates a novel that virtually revolutionizes literature of the 1800's. At a time where most writers wrote in a stuffy prose full of unrealities and a jaded outlook, Dickens dares to tell with honesty what he sees through his window.

Hard Times has yet a misleading title. It gives one ideas of harshness, depression, poverty, and social decline--although the actual reality of then-London, still not something you would choose to read. However, Hard Times has as much depression and poverty as any of Dickens' other works. It is just in this case that Dickens chooses to remind the world that in the deepest despair there is beauty yet to be seen.

Dickens was a strange author. In his supposedly inspiring books, you get an overdose of sadness, and in his depressing books, you find beauty. It is this case with Hard Times.

It is a poor, honest man's search for justice in a world where only the rich have merit. It is a girl's search for true love while battling the arranged marriage for money. And lastly, a woman's search for recognition against her favored, yet dishonest brother. It is these searches that at last come together and become fufilled. And, while at the same time telling a captivating story, it comments on the then--and still now--presence of greed and total dishonesty one has to go through for money.

The title of this review sums up Hard Times. Its beauty comes from the pure searches for truth, the sorrow comes from the evil the characters most overcome to get there, and the honesty is both the truth with which Dickens portrays life and the the overwhelming truth that these protaganists create.

Holly Burke, PhD.

Clinical Psychologist, Abnormal Psych. Professor

Georgetown University, Johns Hopkins Inst.

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Most Recent Customer Reviews
2.0 out of 5 stars Not what I expected
I thought this was a novel about how the common people lived during those times. What they did, how they managed to acquire their needs, how they interacted with each other. Read more
Published 16 days ago by GreyFox
5.0 out of 5 stars Read Dickens's only short novel!
This is a wonderfully crafted, clear and concise book, which also gives a wonderful sense of mid-19th century English life in a factory town. I highly recommend it.
Published 26 days ago by Mark Baker
5.0 out of 5 stars Short but not so sweet.
One recommendation for this book said it was funny. Maybe he meant ironic or satirical. I found no humor in it. Read more
Published 1 month ago by B. A. Skinner
4.0 out of 5 stars Required for class, but a pleasure to read
The book was assigned for my Brit Lit class. If you are undergrad I suggest this edition. Some people in my class had free or other editions and had issues with them. Read more
Published 1 month ago by L.M. Bates
3.0 out of 5 stars My review
I have no read this book yet. So do not read this review, thank you very much. Good bye, sir.
Published 1 month ago by Grant
4.0 out of 5 stars book
Great book. Used for a college class and it was everything I needed. Great read and I would advise to read it if the topic interests you.
Published 1 month ago by Conner McLaughlin
5.0 out of 5 stars Hard Times Review
This product had a few marks where passages were underlined but overall it was in very good condition. It made it to me in good time and the process was easy.
Published 7 months ago by sjwells
5.0 out of 5 stars While often arduous, 'Hard Times' is overall excellent.
Studying this great Victorian novel for A-Levels, I couldn't have been more surprised at how captivating and entertaining Dicken‘s is.
Published 7 months ago by Cameron Spencer Hurley
5.0 out of 5 stars Hard Times, plus an article by Thomas Carlyle!
I love all the Norton Critical editions of literature. Not only do you get a handsomely presented copy of Hard Times, but articles and criticism about the work in one... Read more
Published 9 months ago by drohan00
3.0 out of 5 stars Hard Times
I needed this book for a college class. It was shipped quickly and was in great shape when I got it. Also, it was very affordable, much cheaper than other carriers. Read more
Published 13 months ago by C-flo
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