This is the sixth volume to be published in "The Dickens Companions" series. Information is arranged in the form of notes presented for convenient use with any edition of "Hard Times". Short notes supply historical data on a variety of topics. Longer, discursive notes assemble facts and contextual information which students need in order to understand issues central to the novel. Thus, for example, details about food, costume and transport appear alongside notes about the political and social concerns of the day. To help readers find annotated material from the novel's text, "The Companion" provides in italics the opening phrase of the paragraph to which the annotation refers, followed in bold by the words or passage to be annotated and then the explanatory note. Readers of the novel in search of more information about a note or phrase have only to find the appropriate chapter in "The Companion", looking for the italicized phrase that identifies the paragraph and then the bold entry. This format makes accessible to any reader allusions that may seem otherwise dense or puzzling, as well as providing dependable factual information about the novel's historical and cultural background, especially helpful to students. Each book is the result of extensive research, making the series useful to the community of scholars interested both in Dickens and in all aspects of Victorian Britain.