The ficties marked a return to journalism for Dickens, and increasing attention to social problems. In the novels of the 1850s, he is politically more despondent, emotionally more tragic presenting a remarkably inclusive and increasingly sombre picture of contemporary society.
In Bleak House appeared one of his most famous novels and frontal attack on the foggy and wasteful English legal system.
In Hard Times his criticism is orientated to the exploitative industrialism and rapacious finalcial greed. The education system based on the statistic facts rejecting the education of conciousness and the develop of emotions and imagination.
The range, compasion and intelligence of his apprehension
of his society and its shortcoming enriched his novels and made him both
one of the great forces in 19th century literature and influential spokesman
of the conscience of his age.