The novel is set in the imaginary industrial town of Coketown.

With a typically unforgettable cast of characters - the hard-headed fact-worshipper Professor Gradgrind, the heartless factory owner Bounderby, the warmly endearing Sissy Jupe and the eternally noble Stephen Blackpool - HARD TIMES carries uniquely powerful message and remains one of the most widely read of Dickens' major novels.

It is a bitter expose 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.