Volume 48, Number 12 · July 19, 2001
Charles Dickens, Seer
By Jane Jacobs
Hard Times, Dickens's shortest novel, was written in 1854 and published the same year, falling roughly midway in the author's career as a novelist. Its two immediate predecessors were David Copperfield and Bleak House, its immediate successors Little Dorrit and A Tale of Two Cities, all sensationally successful. Yet Hard Times seems to have been Dickens's least popular novel during his own time and subsequently. One disappointed critic speculated that cuts imposed for serialization were responsible. However, Hard Times was serialized in Household Words, a periodical that Dickens not only founded but edited, so we must presume that the text we have is the text Dickens wanted.
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