English Library: Hard Times

Hard Times is a searing, passionate criticism of a world that values material success and rationalism above the human heart.

Mr Thomas Gradgrind, headmaster of Coketown school and model of Utilitarian virtue, feeds his pupils and family with ‘nothing but facts’ and bans fancy and wonder from young minds. Showing how his neglect of feelings leads to both personal misery and strife in wider society, in contrast with the happiness of the free-spirited circus girl Sissy Jupe, Dickens’s novel is a celebration of the power of the imagination.