Hard Times

Mr. Gradgrind is a man of facts. He runs a school at Coketown, teaching his students that facts and calculations are all that matter in this world. He rebukes his students whose parents hold menial jobs which involve little or no calculations. His students fear him, terrorized by his maniacal love for numbers. His ideals may be misplaced in this town, a factory town, filled with dark gases and blackened buildings. No one feels the pain of Gradgrind’s terror more than his oldest daughter Louisa. She is married to Mr. Bounderby, a man decades older than she is. This book paints the story of a society reeling from the changing times of the Industrial Revolution, which made some people richer and others poorer.

About Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens was an English novelist, short story writer and social critic. He is best remembered for his prolific writing, and especially the novels David Copperfield, A Christmas Carol and The Pickwick Papers.
Considered the literary juggernaut of his age, Dickens constantly portrayed the poor and orphaned in his novels and stories, and touched upon the poor living situations which were rampant in those days.