Hard Times: context links

Helpful material on:

Biographical background of Charles Dickens

• Great Expectations
  • Timeline
  • Biographical background
    • Charles Dickens – Early Life
    • Dickens the successful writer and public figure

Social / political context of Hard Times

• Great Expectations
  • Social / political context
    • Dickens and Victorian Britain
    • Dickens: law and politics
    • Education in Victorian Britain
    • Dickens’ education
• The world of Victorian writers 1837 -1901
  • Making sense of the tangible world
    • Characteristics of Victorian Britain
    • Travel, transport and communication
    • Impact of industrialisation

Religious / philosophical context of Hard Times

• Great Expectations
  • Religious / philosophical context
    • The influence of Christianity
    • Church and chapel
    • More on Dickens’ religious views in his fiction
    • Childhood in the seventeenth and eighteenth century
    • The Romantics and childhood
    • Dickens and the importance of childhood
• Impact of the Bible
  • Big ideas from the Bible
    • Creation, creativity, image of God
    • Forgiveness, mercy and grace
    • Slavery
    • Ten Commandments, The

Literary context of Hard Times

• Great Expectations
  
  • Literary context
    
    • The eighteenth century novel
    • The rising status of the novel
    • The status of the novelist
    • Dickens and the novel
• Features of Victorian literature
  • The role of fiction
    • Moral improvement
  • The impact of society
    • Literacy and serialisation

Further study on Hard Times

• Great Expectations
  
  • Resources and further reading
    
    • Website resources
    • Booklist (Biography / Social, political and cultural context / General critical works on Dickens)
• Critical approaches to literature
  
  • Close reading (new criticism)
  • Contextual reading
  • New approaches since the 1970s
• Tips for successful study
  
  • Engaging with texts
    
    • Engaging with prose
  • How to…
    
    • Plan an essay
    • Approach passage based questions
    • Write a good English exam answer