Charles Dickens, Hard Times

Sophie Phelps (Anglia Ruskin University)
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Hard Times

was Charles Dickens’s tenth novel. With

Great Expectations

it shares the distinction of having an abstract idea as its title – rather than the name of a person or a place – and in being much more condensed and tightly focused than Dickens’s novels usually were. It was first published as a serial in twenty weekly parts between the 1st April and the 12th August 1854 to boost the flagging circulation of

Household Words

, the magazine Dickens edited for the publishers Bradbury and Evans

.

The novel did what was asked of it: the circulation of

Household Words

doubled by June and continued to rise through August, averaging 70,000 - 80,000 copies, “considerably exceeding the best figures to date” (

Hard Times

, xxxix). But the novel came in for some heavy criticism in the…

3491 words

Citation: Phelps, Sophie. "Hard Times". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 07 August 2019 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=4846, accessed 29 March 2024.]

4846 Hard Times 3 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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