Dickens’ Great Novels: Hard Times and Great Expections

Charles Dickens (1812-1870) is regarded by many as the greatest of Victorian novelists, as well as far and away Britain’s best-loved and most popular writer. In this eleven week SDG, we will cover two of his best-known novels. In the first three weeks, we will read HARD TIMES,  published in 1854, and in the following seven weeks, we will read GREAT EXPECTATIONS, published in 1861.  In both these novels, Dickens was at the height of his artistic powers. F. R. Leavis, for one, has described HARD TIMES, which depicts the dystopian existence of an industrial town called Coke, as the novel where Dickens “. . . is for once possessed of a comprehensive vision in which the inhumanities of Victorian civilization are as seen as fostered and sanctioned by a hard philosophy, the aggressive formulation of an inhuman spirit.” Our second novel, GREAT EXPECTATIONS, is the coming-of-age story of Pip, who, born an orphan into a poverty stricken home, is unexpectedly offered the chance to leave his miserable life behind to pursue the life of a gentleman in London after he receives a fortune from an unknown benefactor. But his “great expectations” do not produce great happiness. George Bernard Shaw has ranked it as Dickens’s “most compactly perfect book.”  In the final week, we will watch David Lean’s classic film adaptation of “Great Expectations”.