Thomas Gradgrind is an eminently practical man who believes in facts and statistics and has brought up his two children, Louisa and Tom, accordingly, thoroughly suppressing the imaginative sides of their nature. They are raised in ignorance of love and affection, and the consequences are devastating. No other work of Dickens presents so harsh an indictment against the attitude of life he associated with Utilitarianism. With savage bitterness Dickens...

The story of Little Nell, the beautiful child thrown into a shadowy, terrifying world, seems to belong less to the history of the Victorian novel than to folklore, fairy tale, or myth. The sorrows of Nell and her grandfather are offset by Dickens's creation of a dazzling contemporary world inhabited by some of his most brilliantly drawn characters-the eloquent ne'er-do-well Dick Swiveller; the hungry maid known as the "Marchioness"; the mannish lawyer...