By 1854, when Hard Times was published, Charles Dickens's magisterial progress as a writer had come to incorporate a many-sided, coherent vision of English society, both as it was and as he wished it to be. Hard Times, a classic Dickensian story of redemption set in the industrial north of England, everywhere benefits from this vision - in the trenchancy of its satire, in its sweeping indignation at social injustice, and in the persistent humanity with which its author enlivens his largest and smallest incidents. This edition reprints the original Everyman preface by G. K. Chesterton (1907) and includes four illustrations by Frederick Walker (1862).