Hard Times: read the story in its original weekly parts.
Full details at https://bit.ly/2UPABeL . You can read the parts online courtesy of @Dickens_DJO. Dickens originally published his novels in instalments. Hard Times was published in 20 weekly parts in Dickens’s journal Household Words from 1 April to 12 August 1854. In 2020 we are offered the opportunity to follow the original publication dates, as the story unfolds.
Dickens’s message is as timely and urgent for us in 2020 as it was in 1854.
Click here for an introductory video explaining the project.
You can read each instalment – only when the ‘publication’ date arrives, at Dickens Journals Online – the first instalment is here ready for you to read on 1 April – and you can find all the instalments listed as thumbnails to click on here. I’ll also share a link to each new instalment week by week, and if you’re reading from a paper copy, I will send instructions on which chapters to read too – the first instalment is chapters 1,2 and 3.
Each Wednesday a new post is set up where you can share your comments on the story. What do you find interesting? What bits do you want to know more about? And what do you think might happen next?
The Rules:
- Everyone is welcome. It doesn’t matter if you’re a scholar, an avid reader, or if this is your first Dickens novel – all opinions are valid. The aim of the group is to explore the text together and recapture the sense of that first audience reading this story as it unfolds.
- Keep it polite people!
- No spoilers! Many people here will be reading the story for the first time. And no peeking ahead at the next week’s instalments either!
To begin, just click on ‘Week 1 (1 April: Facts, facts, facts)’ below!
