While Coketown represents the typical manufacturing town of the English midlands, the Manchester aspects of the town come largely from the similarities between the utilitarianism espoused by Gradgrind and Bounderby and the utilitarianism expounded by the "Manchester" school of thought. On another level, Hard Times is considered to be a revision of an earlier novella entitled The Chimes. Bounderby to other "men of business" who populate Dickens's fiction: Ebenezer Scrooge, Ralph Nickleby and Mr. The characters and major themes of the novel are little different from many of the others that are more famous. In the end, Hard Times is among the shortest of Dickens's novels and the material was arranged so that it would "divide well"?prolonging suspense at all of the weekly conclusions.ĭickens had originally intended to take the year off, having written Bleak House the year previous but he was convinced to write Hard Times in part because the book was to improve the financial situation of the struggling magazine. The last time that Dickens had published a work in serial form was in 1841 and when publication of Hard Times had begun, Dickens was barely halfway through the writing. Hard Times was originally published in serial form, in a magazine called Household Words beginning on April 1, 1854.
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