Hard Times Resources

Websites

The Novel Online

So, you can search for specific passages, and so you don't have to type out long quotations.

Victorian Web

Everything you ever wanted to know about our favorite repressed ancestors brought to you by Brown University.

Movie or TV Productions

1977 – TV series

IMDB readers seem to really be into this one – check out those 9 out of 10 stars!

1994 – TV adaptation

The least known but arguably the best of the novel's adaptations.

Historical Documents

Dickens's Working Notes for the Novel

Dickens wrote detailed chapter plans, where you can see how his thoughts and ideas evolved, and how he made the choices that he made while writing.

Dickens's "On Strike"

An article Dickens wrote about the strike he saw first hand in Preston, just before he started to write Hard Times.

1855 New York Times Article on Dickens

A long discussion of his works up until that point, including Hard Times, in PDF format.

Household Words, Volume 10 (1854)

Get a sense of what the novel looked like when published in this weekly journal – this is a facsimile copy of the whole year's volume – hurray for Google Books!

Video

Hard Times Graphic Novel

A kind of animated graphic novel. Check out Coketown!

Animation of Gradgrind Teaching

A short cartoon of Gradgrind in his school telling the kids what's what.

Images

Finally, Some Pictures

Originally, Hard Times was published without illustrations – but of course at some point (about 20 years later) somebody came along and drew some.

Photos, Portraits, and Caricatures of Dickens

Um, yeah. What that title says is what you get.