Books Hard Times

Unusually for Dickens Hard Times is set not in London but in the imaginary midVictorian Northern industrial town of Coketown with its blackened factories downtrodden workers and polluted environment This is the soulless domain of the strict utilitarian Thomas Gradgrind and the heartless factory owner Josiah Bounderby However human joy is not excluded thanks to Mr Slearys HorseRiding circus a ginsoaked and hilarious troupe of openhearted and affectionate people who act as an antidote to all the drudgery and misery endured by the ordinary citizens of Coketown