Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Hard Times: For These Times (commonly known as Hard Times) is the tenth novel by English author Charles Dickens, first published in 1854. The book surveys English society and satirises the social and economic conditions of the era.
Mrs Gamp habitually carries with her a battered black umbrella: so popular with the Victorian public was the character that Gamp became a slang word for an umbrella in general. It is believed that the character was based on a real nurse described to Dickens by his friend Angela Burdett-Coutts. [6] [7]
To boost slumping sales Dickens serialised his own novel, Hard Times, in weekly parts between 1 April and 12 August 1854. It had the desired effect, more than doubling the journal's circulation and encouraging the author, who remarked that he was, "three–parts mad, and the fourth delirious, with perpetual rushing at Hard Times ".
Pictures from Italy is a travelogue by Charles Dickens, written in 1846. The book reveals the concerns of its author as he presents, according to Kate Flint, the country "like a chaotic magic-lantern show, fascinated both by the spectacle it offers, and by himself as spectator".
Thomas Gradgrind is the notorious school board Superintendent in Dickens's 1854 novel Hard Times who is dedicated to the pursuit of profitable enterprise. [1] His name is now used generically to refer to someone who is hard and only concerned with cold facts and numbers.
Portrait of Charles Dickens is an 1839 portrait painting by the Irish artist Daniel Maclise depicting the English novelist Charles Dickens. [ 1 ] [ 2 ] Dickens debut novel The Pickwick Papers had been a popular success, which he had followed up with Nicholas Nickelby .
In "Signs of the Times", Carlyle tried to reshape public opinion about the present Condition of England, which he found unbearable. His criticism of the "mechanical society" produced a memorable narrative in Charles Dickens's novel Hard Times , whose subtitle For These Times is indebted to Carlyle's essay.
Charles Dickens spent several days in Preston in January 1854. Although he does not describe a strike in Hard Times , whose publication began in April 1854 in Household Words , he was inspired by Mortimer Grimshaw to create the character of the union leader, Slackbridge; the intransigence of the bosses inspired the character of Bounderby. [ 2 ]