Charles Dickens was an influential English writer, the most famous novelist of the Victorian era. In Hard Times, a classic of literature, Dickens provides a profound critique of the living conditions of English workers at the end of the 19th century, highlighting the discrepancy between the extreme poverty in which they lived and the comfort afforded to the wealthier classes of Victorian England, as well as other emerging environmental and social issues of the time. Hard Times is a visionary work that remains fully relevant today, as many of the social and environmental problems addressed by Dickens persist in our society.