This is the shortest of Dickens' novels. Set in the fictitious Victorian industrial Coketown, a generic Northern English mill-town, this book appraises English society and is aimed at highlighting the social and economic pressures of the times.

Hard Times–For These Times (commonly known as Hard Times) is the tenth novel by Charles Dickens, first published in 1854. Compressed, stark, allegorical, it is a bitter exposé of capitalist exploitation during the industrial revolution–and a fierce denunciation of the philosophy of materialism, which threatens the human imagination in all times and places. With a typically unforgettable cast of characters–including the heartless fact-worshipper.

Charles John Huffam Dickens (7 February 1812–9 June 1874) was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's most well-known fictional characters and is generally regarded as the greatest novelist of the Victorian period. During his life, his works enjoyed unprecedented popularity, and by the twentieth century he was widely seen as a literary genius by critics and scholars. His novels and short stories continue to be widely popular.