Off The Bookshelf US -Books Hard Times (Norton Critical Editions) Hard Times (Norton Critical Editions) New & Used Hard Times (Norton Critical Editions) Books CDS DVD's Nusic Electronics

Search Books - select a category

Buy Hard Times (Norton Critical Editions) online at Discounted New and Used prices. Delivered to your door with Off-The-Bookshelf.

Hard Times (Norton Critical Editions)
by: Charles Dickens

List Price: $11.25

Off The Bookshelf's Price: $10.12

You Save: $1.13 (10%)
Prices subject to change.

Used Price: $5.24
Collectible Price: $11.25
Third Party New Price: $7.87

Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.8
EAN: 9780393975604
ISBN: 0393975606
Label: W. W. Norton
Manufacturer: W. W. Norton
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 496
Publication Date: 2000-12
Publisher: W. W. Norton
Studio: W. W. Norton
Sales Rank: 34537

Related Items:

Our Mutual Friend (Modern Library Classics)

Editorial Review:

Product Description:
This text, that of the 1854 first edition, has been re-edited in light of recent scholarly findings. Annotations have been revised and expanded. Backgrounds, Sources, and Contemporary Reactions reprints all of the documents on industrialism, education, and utilitarianism that appeared in the Second Edition, save one, and introduces new pieces by R. D. Butterworth and Thomas Carlyle. Criticism collects seventeen important essays on Hard Times-seven of them new to the Third Edition-by Hippolyte Taine, John Ruskin, George Gissing, Bernard Shaw, F. R. Leavis, Monroe Engel, Robert Barnard, David Craig, David Lodge, Roger Fowler, Patricia E. Johnson, Gorman Beauchamp, Martha C. Nussbaum, David L. Cowles, Jean Ferguson Carr, Eric P. Levy, and Leona Toker. A Chronology and revised Selected Bibliography are also included.

About the Series: No other series of classic texts equals the caliber of the Norton Critical Editions. Each volume combines the most authoritative text available with the comprehenive pedagogical apparatus necessary to appreciate the work fully. Careful editing, first-rate translation, and thorough explanatory annotations allow each text to meet the highest literary standards while remaining accessible to students. Each edition is printed on acid-free paper and every text in the series remains in print. Norton Critical Editions are the choice for excellence in scholarship for students at more than 2,000 universities worldwide.

Customer Reviews

Average Rating: out of 5 stars

Rating:

- Physical comedy, social commentary, irony, and pathos with a sharp ear for vocabulary and conversation
Charles Dickens was a great writer. A simple statement, easily and often made, but its correctness is confirmed and enlarged with each story that I read.

He was so good at what he did, and was so well-loved in his time, and so often imitated, that he is easily dismissed or parodied. No matter, He writes physical comedy, social commentary, irony, and pathos with a sharp ear for vocabulary and conversation and an internal clock for pacing that is nearly infallible.

This tale focuses on Coketown, an early industrial city blighted by its creating industry, its owning tycoon, its proto-organizing workers, its ambitious MP, and his morally-bankrupt protégé. Hard Times is considered one of Dicken's strongest statements against the grinding poverty of the unrestrained ... Read More

Rating:

- Underwhelmed
This is not Dickens at his best. No offence to the narrator, who does a good job but I think the story itself is rather boring. Especially when compared with his classics "Great Expectations", "A Christms Carol" and "A Tale of Two Cities".

Rating:

- Try something else.
I picked up this book at B&N because I had just read two Jane Austin novels and I thought this would be a light read. I was wrong. The beggining and the end had a purpose in the story but the middle could have been much, much shorter and the ending made a little longer.

I liked the character of Mr. Bounderby. He was very well developed. I would even say over-developed, but he was the only one. How did Sissy influence the youngest Gradgrind? Why didn't we know of Mrs. Bounderbys inner turmoil till she ran to her father? Every character had something missing. What happened to Mr. Bounderby once he was found out? Why is Sissy so special and what did she really do for the family?

It was a long book where nothing much happened until the last quarter and when it finally ... Read More

Rating:

- Hard Times is Dickens shortest novel as it takes the lid off respectability in ficitional Coketown
Hard Times was written in 1854 by England's greatest novelist Charles
Dickens (1812-1870. It is the shortest of his novels. The novel was originally published as a weekly series in "Household Words" periodical edited by Dickens. The novel reads quickly telling a story that is still relevant in our own post-industrial 21st century Western Society.
The novel is set in fictional Coketown set in the English Midlands. The first scene is set in a classroom where children are being taught by rote
learning. Only FACTS yells Mr. Gradgrind who has raised his two children the feckless Tom and the more impressionable Louisa to eschew the emotions of art and the heart to stick strictly to practical learning.
Enter into the town Mr. Sleary's circus. Cecilia (Sissy) Jupe is a young girl ... Read More

Rating:

- Excellent Edition of a Worthy Classic
Although not one of his more popular novels, Charles Dickens' Hard Times still stands as a classic among classics. Carrying on with his highly prolific writing style, this novel is a bit more bleak than his other renown works, but enjoyable from the start, especially with Dickens' excellent choice of character naming.
Suitable for most ages, this classic should not be passed up. And with the Norton annotations and notes, this edition will help readers understand better the context in which the author writes in.

Books : Hard Times (Norton Critical Editions)