Length11h 37m
About this audiobook
Hard Times is unusual in several respects. It is by far the shortest of Dickens' novels, barely a quarter of the length of those written immediately before and after it. Also, unlike all but one of his other novels, Hard Times has neither a preface nor illustrations. Moreover, it is his only novel not to have scenes set in London. Instead the story is set in the fictitious Victorian industrial Coketown, a generic Northern English mill-town, in some ways similar to Manchester, though smaller. Coketown may be partially based upon 19th-century Preston. One of Dickens's reasons for writing Hard Times was that sales of his weekly periodical, Household Words, were low, and it was hoped its publication in instalments would boost circulation - as indeed proved to be the case. Since publication it has received a mixed response from critics. Critics such as F. R. Leavis, George Bernard Shaw, and Thomas Macaulay have mainly focused on Dickens's treatment of trade unions and his post-Industrial Revolution pessimism regarding the divide between capitalist mill owners and undervalued workers during the Victorian era.
Audiobook details
GenreLiterary Classics, General Fiction
Length11 hrs 37 mins
Narrated bySean Murphy
FormatAudiobook
Publish dateSep 1, 2018
LanguageEnglish
Table of contents
1Chapters 1-3
12Chapters 22
2Chapters 4-5
13Chapters 23
3Chapter 6
14Chapter 24
4Chapters 7-8
15Chapters 25-26
5Chapters 9-10
16Chapters 27-28
Show all chaptersShow less
6Chapters 11-12
17Chapters 29-30
7Chapters 13-14
18Chapters 31-32
8Chapters 15-16
19Chapters 33-34
9Chapters 17
20Chapters 35-36
10Chapters 18-19
21Locked Out
11Chapters 20-21
22On Strike
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