02912cam a2200361 4500 91635782 TxAuBib 20071206120000.0 040223s2004||||||||||||||||||||||||eng|u 2004102764 9781593081560 1593081561 TxAuBib Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870. Hard times / Charles Dickens, Karen Odden. New York, NY : Fine Creative Media, 2004. 316p. Barnes & noble classics Accelerated Reader: BL: 9.3 - Pts: 20.0. Hard Times, by Charles Dickens, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics: All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works. Set amid smokestacks and factories, Charles Dickens’s Hard Times is a blistering portrait of Victorian England as it struggles with the massive economic turmoil brought on by the Industrial Revolution. Championing the mind-numbing materialism of the period is Thomas Gradgrind, one of Dickens’s most vivid characters. He opens the novel by arguing that boys and girls should be taught “nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life.” Forbidding the development of imagination, Gradgrind is ultimately forced to confront the results of his philosophy—his own daughter’s terrible unhappiness. Full of suspense, humor, and tenderness, Hard Times is a brilliant defense of art in an age of mechanism. Karen Odden received her Ph.D. from New York University, where she did her dissertation on Victorian literature. Most recently a lecturer at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, she is now a freelance writer and lives in Arizona. 20071206. tITLE. Social problems Fiction. Married people Fiction. England Fiction. England Social conditions 19th century Fiction. Utilitarianism -- Fiction. Barnes & noble classics. https://catdir.loc.gov/catdir/enhancements/fy0711/2004102764-b.html Contributor biographical information https://catdir.loc.gov/catdir/enhancements/fy0711/2004102764-d.html Publisher description https://catdir.loc.gov/catdir/enhancements/fy0805/2004102764-s.html Sample text TXTLL