Hard Times

Charles Dickens · 1812–1870 · England

Why it matters

Set in the grim mill town of Coketown, Dickens's shortest novel indicts a fact-obsessed education that starves imagination and a factory system that starves everything else. His most concentrated dose of industrial-age social criticism.

At a glance

Short and pointed, though its allegorical names and sustained polemic can feel schematic.