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
Charles Dickens stated that reading Dickens, especially "A Christmas Carol", was one of the things that was keeping him from committing suicide. Oscar Wilde generally disparaged his depiction of character, while admiring his gift for caricature. His late contemporary William Wordsworth, by then Poet laureate, thought him a "very talkative, vulgar young person", adding he had not read a line of his work; Dickens in return thought Wordsworth "a dreadful Old Ass". Henry James denied him a premier position, calling him "the greatest of superficial novelists": Dickens failed to endow his characters with psychological depth and the novels, "loose baggy monsters", betrayed