"Since its first publication thirty-five years ago, the Norton Critical Edition of Charles Dickens' Hard Times has been enthusiastically received as both a notable work of Dickens scholarship and a reliable text for the classroom. For this Third Edition, the editors, Fred Kaplan and Sylvere Monod, have re-edited the 1854 first edition text in light of scholarly findings made in the decade since the Second Edition was published. In addition, the annotations to the novel have been revised and expanded.".

""Contexts" continues to reprint important documents on industrialism, education, and utilitarianism, including new selections by R.D. Butterworth and Thomas Carlyle." ""Criticism" collects sixteen varied assessments of Hard Times, both contemporary and modern, seven of them new to the Third Edition. The new contributors are Gorman Beauchamp, Jean Ferguson Carr, David L. Cowles, Patricia E. Johnson, Eric P. Levy, Martha C. Nussbaum, and Leona Toker.".

"A Chronology and updated Selected Bibliography are also included."--BOOK JACKET.