In Chapter 8 of "Book the First: Sowing," Dickens writes that the workers in Coketown often went to the library and, once there, they "took De Foe to their bosoms, instead of Euclid, and seemed to be on the whole more comforted by Goldsmith than by Cocker." Mr. Gradgrind laments the people's choice of reading material, but the narrator's satirical comments defend it. Note that Daniel De Foe (Defoe) and Oliver Goldsmith are popular novelists, while Euclid is the father of geometry and Edward Cocker a producer of arithmetic books.

Why are the people of Coketown drawn to works of imagination rather than to works based solely on facts? Why is imagination or fancy important to people, in general? Would the people of Coketown likely be interested in reading Hard Times? Why?