Gradgrind ""Gradgrind, a character in "Hard Times," who weighs and measures everything by a hard and fast rule and makes no allowances. "" (from the Gurenberg Project's version). Gradgrind Mr Thomas Gradgrind is the notorious school board Superintendent in Dickens's novel "Hard Times" who is dedicated to the pursuit of profitable enterprise. His name is now used generically to refer to someone who is hard and only concerned with cold facts and numbers. In the story, the man himself he was the father of five children, naming them after prominent utilitarians such as Robert Malthus. He also ran a model school
Charles Dickens drowning in "The Old Curiosity Shop"), and made suggestions about plot and character. It was he who suggested that Charley Bates should be redeemed in "Oliver Twist". Dickens had not thought of killing Little Nell, and it was Forster who advised him to entertain this possibility as necessary to his conception of the heroine. Dickens's serialisation of his novels was not uncriticised by other authors. In Robert Louis Stevenson's novel "The Wrecker", there is a comment by Captain Nares, investigating an abandoned ship: "See! They were writing up the log," said Nares, pointing to the ink-bottle. "Caught napping, as usual.