SOURCE: "Hard Times, " in The Collected Works of G. K. Chesterton: Chesterton on Dickens, Vol. XV, Ignatius Press, 1989, pp. 357-63.

Regarded as one of England's premier men of letters during the first half of the twentieth century, Chesterton is best known today as a colorful bon vivant, a witty essayist, Catholic apologist, and as the creator of the Father Brown mysteries. His essays are characterized by their humor, frequent use of paradox, and chatty, rambling style. He was a lifelong Dickens enthusiast and wrote many essays on Dickens's works, including the introductions to each of the novels published in J. M. Dent's Everyman's Edition of Dickens's works. In the following essay, originally published in 1908 for the Everyman's Edition of Hard Times, Chesterton discourses on this novel as Dickens's harshest, a work strident in its emphasis upon egalitarianism.

Howells on Dickens as a Writer of Dialogue:

The vernacular of...