Household Words was an English weekly magazine edited by Charles Dickens in the 1850s. It took its name from the line in Shakespeare's Henry V: "Familiar in his mouth as household words."
Front cover of Vol. II, 28 September 1850– 22 March 1851
Hard Times: For These Times is the tenth novel by Charles Dickens, first published in 1854. The book surveys English society and satirises the social and economic conditions of the era.
Title page of the serial in Household Words, April 1854
Gradgrind apprehends Louisa and Tom, his two eldest children, caught peeping at the circus.
George Bernard Shaw was critical of the book's message.