Introducing Hard Times | Mega Dickens Readalong
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 26 ส.ค. 2024
- #Dickensalong
In which I introduce Hard Times . . .
Hard Times, Charles Dickens: / 5344.hard_times
Bookshop.org UK affiliate link: uk.bookshop.or...
The audiobook I’m listening to is narrated by Bertie Cavel: www.audible.co...
I also mentioned in this video:
Shirley, Charlotte Brontë: / 31168.shirley
Mary Barton, Elizabeth Gaskell: / mary-barton
North and South, Elizabeth Gaskell: / 512710.north_and_south
More about the Mega Dickens Readalong
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The Schedule
The Pickwick Papers, 1837: October and November 2022
Oliver Twist, 1838: December 2022
Nicholas Nickleby, 1839: January and February 2023
The Old Curiosity Shop, 1841: March 2023
Barnaby Rudge, 1841: April and May 2023
Martin Chuzzlewit, 1844: June and July 2023
Dombey and Son, 1848: August and September 2023
David Copperfield, 1850: October and November 2023
Bleak House, 1853: December 2023 and January 2024
Hard Times, 1854: February 2024
Little Dorrit, 1855: March and April 2024
A Tale of Two Cities, 1859: May 2024
Great Expectations, 1861: June 2024
Our Mutual Friend, 1865: July and August 2024
The Mystery of Edwin Drood, 1870: September 2024
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In 1843 Dickens travelled to Manchester to support the "Athenaeum" a charity to educate poor people.
He also visited his sister in Manchester.
Soon after Dickens wrote " A Christmas Carol " emotionally motivated by the experience of seeing his sister deal with her disabled child.....Charles' nephew.
His disabled nephew may have inspired the pathos of the "Tiny Tim" character?
Thanks for this introduction. I knew nothing about Hard Times. It is the last of his novels that I have not yet read. I’ve been enjoying the mega Dickens read along since the beginning and hope to stick with it to the end. Thank you.
Another great video
Knowing that David Copperfield is his longest is oddly comforting. I thought Bleak House and a few others were longest. But if I have already read his longest I feel more prepared to read any of his others.
I have read Mary Barton, North and South and Shirley all in the last few months so now I feel like I should read Hard Times soom now.
Read this for Victober and loved it 😊
Vote for Josiah Bounderby of Coketown! No more fancies and pie in the sky!
Hi from Canada! I’m looking forward to reading this one.
The connection between Hard Times and North and South is fascinating. Didn't know that!
If have a hard time reading that !
I read Hard Times 2 years ago and it was interesting for sure! Looking forward to reading everyone's thoughts in the discord.
Hard Times was a difficult novel to read. Dickens’ is stubbornly in the reader’s face from beginning to end with everything in his view that’s wrong with Victorian culture. You can almost choke on the coal smoke and empathize with the sad state of the workers. I thought you did an excellent job pointing out good reasons to read Hard Times, and I wish I could read the papers for the modules in English literature and history you wrote for this book at university. Always enjoy your content, Katie, thanks so much.
Super helpful comment about the Northern dialect and the suggestion to use the audiobook!
I read this for the first time a couple of years ago. I will listen to the audio.
Oooh! I'm gonna do this one. I haven't read Hard Times in a long time!
I read Hard Times last year - as you say it doesnt follow Dicken's usual style but is still quite enjoyable! Thanks for your videos and thoughts.
Stephen Blackpool is one of Dickens' greatest characters and comes across as a gentler version of Nicholas Higgins from Gaskell's North And South, but the exchange between Sissy(girl number twenty) and James Harthouse "who was touched in the cavity where his heart should have been" is one of the great moments in this beautiful novel.
Agreed!
Hi, great commentary could do a video about the love story in north and south because you said it’s your favourite love story, it’s mine too
I'm still on Bleak House. I will finish it and skip Hard Times as I read it last year, then carry on in time for the next book. Thanks for another great video.
I'm just finishing "Shirley" right now, so I think Hard Times is a good fit with that. It's one of Dickens' shortest too, so a gentle point for me to jump on with your readalong!
I have some thoughts before I pick up Hard Times again - Charlotte Bronte does her Luddites in "Shirley" from the perspective of knowing the soul of a factory owner who is threatened by their activities, who is also one of her major romantic leads. But she does have the character of Will Farren, who is the essentially decent working man who (according to Bronte) has legitimate grievances against the bosses, but who is led astray into violence by bad faith agitators. I did think while I was reading this that Farren and his story is very similar in feeling to what Dickens does with his essentially decent working class man in Hard Times while portraying the union leaders and strike leaders as a vile crew of bad men who are leading the decent working class astray. I guess from the middle class perspective of writers like Dickens and Bronte there's a limit on how radical their suggestions of reform can get, either because of their own beliefs or because being too radical would be something their readers would not take.
Yes, Shirley is so interesting to compare to Hard Times, too! North and South is well worth reading, too, if you haven't, with a very interesting and slightly different look at unions.
@@katiejlumsden North and South is definitely on my list as the first Gaskell to read when I can. I've seen lots of people recommending her in youtube (I read Gaskell's biography of Charlotte Bronte before, and Cranford a v. long time ago. Also have a bunch of Gaskell saved on my Kindle, but seem to have read HG. Wells and George Orwell instead) Gaskell is, I think, more overlooked than Trollope.
I'm going to try and read it 🙂
I still haven't got started on The Pickwick Papers.
It's super entertaining and fun!
Hi from Ireland. I’m also going to do this one on audiobook, and hadn’t considered that it would make the regional dialect easier. That will be a bonus, as I found reading the dialect parts very slow going last time I read it.
While, I don't think that I'll have time to get to Hard Times in February, I appreciate you talking about the book. This has been one that I have avoided reading for a while, but the idea of a tighter structure and a northern setting is something that appeals to me - although the idea of dialect being represented on the page takes me back to my struggles with Joseph in Wuthering Heights. I hope that you gain something new from listening to the audiobook and that it might prove to be an enriching experience.
It's a great book - and the audiobook is helping with the dialect. Stephen's is not as back as Joseph's, but still, it is tricky in places!
Yes, education by facts has an appeal to some but - as became clearer later in the 19th cent. - what is undeniably true in 1837 is open to question, even ridicule in 1937.
Northern Dialect = Residual Norse
?!
Thank you, Katie🌷I wanted to join the discord server, but I don’t seem to be able to do so on my ipad just by clicking on the link you’ve provided. If you perhaps could let me know what the full URL is, I’ll try again. Thanks!
The link should just be this: discord.gg/zaeZ3HCPSf Let me know if it doesn't work!
@@katiejlumsden Thanks, Katie. It worked!😊
Another great video