“Do the wise thing and the kind thing too, and make the best of us and not the worst.” Hard Times, a novel by celebrated English novelist Charles Dickens, was first published in serialised form in the periodical Household Words in 1854 and in book form later that same year. The story revolves around Louisa and Tom Gradgrind who have been raised by their father, an educator, who believes that his children need to learn only factual information to survive in an industrialised world. Deprived of culture and imagination, Louisa and Tom turn out to be hollow people without the capacity for empathy. Louisa’s marriage to Josiah Bounderby, a rich and boorish banker, eventually collapses. A bitter woman, she goes back to her father’s house. Tom’s life takes a disastrous turn too after he robs his brother-in-law’s bank. It dawns on their father that their upbringing has lacked the essential humanising element. Dickens delivers a resounding indictment of industrialisation in Hard Times. The novels lays bare its crippling, dehumanizing impact on mid-19th-century England.