Hard Times

Hard Times – For These Times (commonly known as Hard Times) is the tenth novel by Charles Dickens, first published in 1854. The book appraises English society and highlights the social and economic pressures of the times.

Background

Hard Times is unusual in several respects. It is by far the shortest of Dickens' novels, barely a quarter of the length of those written immediately before and after it. Also, unlike all but one of his other novels, Hard Times has neither a preface nor illustrations. Moreover, it is his only novel not to have scenes set in London. Instead 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.

One of Dickens's reasons for writing Hard Times was that sales of his weekly periodical, Household Words, were low, and it was hoped the novel's publication in instalments would boost circulation – as indeed proved to be the case. Since publication it has received a mixed response from critics. Critics such as George Bernard Shaw and Thomas Macaulay have mainly focused on Dickens's treatment of trade unions and his post–Industrial Revolution pessimism regarding the divide between capitalist mill owners and undervalued workers during the Victorian era. F. R. Leavis, a great admirer of the book, included it--but not Dickens' work as a whole--as part of his Great Tradition of English novels.

Hard Times (disambiguation)

Hard Times is an 1854 novel by Charles Dickens.

Hard Times may also refer to:

Film and television

Music

Hard Times (1975 film)

Hard Times is a 1975 film starring Charles Bronson as Chaney, a drifter who travels to Louisiana during the Great Depression and begins competing in illegal bare-knuckled boxing matches. The movie was Walter Hill's directorial debut.

Plot

Chaney (Charles Bronson), a mysterious, down-on-his luck drifter during the Great Depression, arrives in town in the boxcar of a freight train. He comes upon a bare-knuckled street fight run by gamblers. After the bout, he approaches one of the fight's organizers, the fast-talking "Speed" (James Coburn), and asks Speed to set up a fight. Betting his few dollars on himself, Chaney wins with a single punch.

Speed wants to become Chaney's manager. They travel to New Orleans, where Speed intends to enter Chaney against local fighters at long odds. Chaney takes a cheap sleeping room. At a diner, he meets Lucy Simpson (Jill Ireland), a lonely woman whose husband is in prison. They begin an uneasy affair.

Chaney cautions Speed that he wants to make a little money to "fill a few in-betweens," and then move on. Speed recruits a cutman, the medical school dropout Poe (Strother Martin). An opium addict ("a dyed in the wool hophead") Poe is relieved when Chaney accepts him.

FO

Fo or FO may refer to:

Locations

Science and technology

Military and aviation

People

Apúlia e Fão

Apúlia e Fão is a civil parish in the municipality of Esposende, Portugal. It was formed in 2013 by the merger of the former parishes Apúlia and Fão. The population in 2011 was 7,301, in an area of 16.29 km².

References

Oxygen difluoride

Oxygen difluoride is the chemical compound with the formula OF₂. As predicted by VSEPR theory, the molecule adopts a "bent" molecular geometry similar to that of water, but it has very different properties, being a strong oxidizer.

Preparation

Oxygen difluoride was first reported in 1929; it was obtained by the electrolysis of molten potassium fluoride and hydrofluoric acid containing small quantities of water. The modern preparation entails the reaction of fluorine with a dilute aqueous solution of sodium hydroxide, with sodium fluoride as a side-product:

Reactions

Its powerful oxidizing properties are suggested by the oxidation number of +2 for the oxygen atom instead of its normal -2. Above 200 °C, OF₂ decomposes to oxygen and fluorine via a radical mechanism.

OF₂ reacts with many metals to yield oxides and fluorides. Nonmetals also react: phosphorus reacts with OF₂ to form PF₅ and POF₃; sulfur gives SO₂ and SF₄; and unusually for a noble gas, xenon reacts, at elevated temperatures, yielding XeF₄ and xenon oxyfluorides.