Hard Times (novel) Deb McAndrew and directed by Conrad Nelson. The novel has also been adapted twice as a mini-series for British television, once in 1977 with Patrick Allen as Gradgrind, Timothy West as Bounderby, Rosalie Crutchley as Mrs. Sparsit and Edward Fox as Harthouse, and again in 1994 with Bob Peck as Gradgrind, Alan Bates as Bounderby, Dilys Laye as Mrs. Sparsit, Bill Paterson as Stephen, Harriet Walter as Rachael and Richard E. Grant as Harthouse. Hard Times (novel) Hard Times – For These Times (commonly known as Hard Times) is the tenth novel by Charles Dickens, first published in 1854. The
Racism in the work of Charles Dickens of the 1840s, and his creation of the antisemitic caricature of the character of Fagin. Authors Sally Ledger and Holly Furneaux, in their book "Dickens in Context" examine this puzzle as to how one can square away Dickens' racialism with concern with the poor and the downcast. They argue this can be explained by saying that Dickens was a nativist and "cultural chauvinist" in the sense of being highly ethnocentric and ready to justify British imperialism, but not a racist in the sense of being a "biological determinist" as was the anthropologist Robert Knox. That is, Dickens did not regard