A short novel set in Coketown, an industrial northern English town. Thomas Gradgrind, a schoolmaster and believer in facts alone, raises his children to distrust imagination and feeling. Around him are the factory owner Bounderby, the circus performers who offer a different view of life, and Stephen Blackpool, a mill worker caught between hardship and unfairness. Dickens criticises a cold, calculating approach to people and the conditions of industrial labour, in a compact and pointed story.
Quotes
Now, what I want is Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts.
Facts alone are wanted in life.
A man of realities. A man of facts and calculations.
there is a wisdom of the Head, and that there is a wisdom of the Heart.