SOURCE: "Addenda: The Sports of Plenty," in The Maturity of Dickens, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1959, 169-89.

In the following excerpt, Engel favorably appraises Hard Times, focusing upon its economy of presentation and emphasis upon the need for imagination—not utility alone—to make life bearable and full.

The recent marked increase in the reputation of Hard Times has come at the expense of Dickens' general reputation. Satisfaction with this one sport of his genius has been used as a basis on which to denigrate that genius in its more characteristic manifestations. Hard Times satisfies the modern taste (in the arts alone) for economy—in Action, for spare writing and clearly demonstrable form. Dickens was capable of both, but they were not natural or congenial to him, and he chose to employ them only under the duress of limited space. Curiously enough, Hard Times grants a scant measure...