Charles Dickens

Coketown's prosperity is built on the cotton mills where thousands slave away for long hours and little pay. "Hard Times" celebrates the importance of the human heart in an age obsessed with materialism. Circus, music, and dark comedy abound in this Dickensian theatrical tale.

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In Hard Times, Dickens illustrates the condition of England through the fictional city of Coketown. Among its inhabitants are Thomas Gradgrind, the utilitarian headmaster who attempts to impose his rigid worldview on his family circle, and the uncaring businessman Mr Bounderby. Their materialist philosophies, as opposed to the world of fancy or imagination, are tested throughout the novel, which also explores workers’ conditions, trade unions and the spurious use of statistics. Perhaps the most polemical of his novels – in which hard-biting satire, moving drama and exuberant comedy find a very succinct and powerful expression – Hard Times is the ideal introduction to the world of Dickens.

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Tom Tidler's Ground, also known as Tom Tiddler's Ground or Tommy Tiddler's Ground, is an ancient children's game in which one player, "Tom Tidler," stands on a heap of stones, gravel, etc.; other players rush onto the heap, crying "Here I am on Tom Tidler's ground," while Tom tries to capture the invaders or keep them off. clarify] By extension, the phrase has come to mean the ground or tenement of a sluggard, or of one who is easily taken advantage of. The essence of the game lives on in such more modern games as Steal the Bacon and variants of Tag. "Tom Tiddler's Ground" is the name of an 1861 short story 1] by Charles Dickens, and the phrase "Tom Tidler's ground" appears in his novels Nicholas Nickleby, David Copperfield and Dombey and Son. "Tom Tiddler's Ground" is also the title of a 1931 poem and a 1931 anthology of children's poetry edited by Walter de la Mare. Tom Tiddler's Ground is a 1934 novel by Edward Shanks. "Tom Tiddler's Ground" is a song on the 1970 album Flat Baroque and Berserk by Roy Harper. E. F Benson also mentions "Tom Tiddler's Ground" in The Worshipful Lucia. Tom Tiddler's Ground is also used in modern English as a euphemism for having an uncertain status, for example, "I asked her why her performance review was late and I could tell she was on Tom Tiddler's Ground". "And why Tom Tiddler's ground?" said the Traveller. "Because he scatters halfpence to Tramps and such-like," returned the Landlord, "and of course they pick 'em up. And this being done on his own land (which it IS his own land, you observe, and were his family's before him), why it is but regarding the halfpence as gold and silver, and turning the ownership of the property a bit round your finger, and there you have the name of the children's game complete.

S ... de un loco Como hubiera herido mi coraz n esta palabra algunos a os ha Como hubiera des-pertado el terror que de vez en cuando me acomet a, haciendo que la sangre como fuego corriera por mis venas, hasta que el frio hielo del temor en gruesas gotas cubr a mi piel, y mis rodillas temblaban de miedo

"Mugby Junction" is a set of short stories written in 1866 by Charles Dickens and collaborators Charles Collins, Amelia B. Edwards, Andrew Halliday, and Hesba Stretton. It was first published in a Christmas edition of the magazine All the Year Round. Dickens penned a majority of the issue, including the frame narrative in which "the Gentleman for Nowhere," who has spent his life cloistered in the firm Barbox Brothers & Co., makes use of his new-found freedom in retirement to explore the rail lines that connect with Mugby Junction. Dickens's collaborators each contributed an individual story to the collection. Barbox Brothers / by Charles Dickens Barbox Brothers and Co. / by Charles Dickens Main line. The boy at Mugby / by Charles Dickens No. 1 branch line. The signalman / by Charles Dickens No. 2 branch line. The engine-driver / by Andrew Halliday No. 3 branch line. The compensation house / by Charles Collins No. 4 branch line. The travelling post office / by Hesba Stretton No. 5 branch line. The engineer / by Amelia Edwards. Mugby Junction includes the famous ghost story "The Signal-Man" concerning a spectre seen beside a tunnel entrance. The signal-man of the title tells the narrator of a ghost that has been haunting him. Each spectral appearance precedes, and is a harbinger of, a tragic event on the railway on which the signalman works. The signalman's work is at a signalbox in a deep cutting near a tunnel entrance on a lonely stretch of the line, and he controls the movements of passing trains. When there is danger, his fellow signalmen alert him via telegraph and alarms. Three times, he receives phantom warnings of danger when his bell rings in a fashion that only he can hear. Each warning is followed by the appearance of the spectre, and then by a terrible accident. The first accident involves a terrible collision between two trains in the tunnel. Dickens may have based this incident on the Clayton Tunnel rail crash that occurred in 1861, five years before he wrote the story. Readers in 1866 would have been familiar with this major disaster. The second warning involves the mysterious death of a young woman on a passing train. The final warning is a premonition of the signalman's own death. Another story features, in a thinly disguised form, the town of Rugby in Warwickshire and the town's railway station. One of the stories satirizes the refreshment rooms where Dickens was humiliated by the proprietess when he was ordering a cup of coffee. She refused to pass him the sugar bowl until she had been paid, clearly not recognising the celebrity author.