Author: Charles Dickens

Publisher: Wordsworth Editions 1995

Pages: 234

Description:

Unusually for Dickens Hard Times is set, not in London, but in the imaginary mid-Victorian Northern industrial town of Coke town with its blackened factories, downtrodden workers and polluted environment. This is the soulless domain of the strict utilitarian Thomas Gradgrind and the heartless factory owner Josiah Bounderby. However, human Joy is not excluded thanks to Mr Sleary's Horse  Riding circus, a gin soaked and hilarious troupe of open-hearted and affectionate people who act as an antidote to all the drudgery and misery endured by the ordinary citizens of Coke town.