Hard Times (novel) Gradgrind - a younger sister of Tom and Louisa Gradgrind who spends a lot of time with Sissy Jupe. She is cheerful, affectionate and despite looking similar to Louisa, in personality she is opposite. Dickens wished to educate readers about the working conditions of some of the factories in the industrial towns of Manchester, and Preston, to "strike the heaviest blow in my power", and as well to confront the assumption that prosperity runs parallel to morality. This notion he systematically deconstructed in through his portrayal of the moral monsters, Mr. Bounderby and James Harthouse. Dickens also believed in the
Past Master (novel) Master" "an eccentric, idiosyncratic minor masterpiece", saying "it has all of Lafferty's usual color and pyramiding of manic invention" as well as offering "easily the most real immediate problem of spiritual agony yet seen in science fiction". Past Master (novel) Past Master is a novel by science fiction writer R. A. Lafferty first published in 1968. The novel follows the attempt of a future Utopian society in preventing its decline, by bringing Sir Thomas More to the year 2535. The novel was well received by critics, and was nominated for the 1968 Nebula Award and the 1969 Hugo Award. It