HARD TIMES (Penguin Clothbound Classics) by Charles DickensDESCRIPTION Hard Times: For These Times is the tenth novel by Charles Dickens, first published in 1854. The book surveys English society and satirises the social and economic conditions of the era. the story is set in the fictitious Victorian industrial Coketown, a generic Northern English mill town, in some ways similar to Manchester, though smaller. Coketown may be partially based on 19th century Preston.