'Hard Times was published in 1854 and is set in Northern England in Coketown; a polluted and suffering place with smoke-filled factories and soulless workers who have been downtrodden by the cruel and heartless Thomas Gradgrind and Josiah Bounderby.Considered Dickens' harshest indictment of mid-19th-century industrial practices and their dehumanizing effects; Hard Times offers a fascinating tapestry of Victorian life; filled with the richness of detail; brilliant characterization; and passionate social concern that typify the novelist's finest creations.'