Audiobook · read by volunteers
Hard Times
Charles Dickens (1812–1870)
Read by Kirsten Ferreri, Stewart Wills, Rosalind Wills, Joseph Ugoretz, Paul Hansen, Stuart Bell, Debra Lynn, Zachary Brewster-Geisz, JemmaBlythe, Graham Thomsen · 22 chapters · 10 h 54
About the book
Coketown is a grim industrial city of red brick and black smoke, and in it Thomas Gradgrind runs a school on a single principle: facts, and nothing but facts. He raises his own children the same way, with no room for wonder, poetry or play. Around him gather a ruthless banker, a downtrodden mill worker, a circus troupe whose warmth stands out against the general chill, and a young woman caught between her upbringing and her heart. Charles Dickens turns his full satirical energy on the idea that human beings can be measured and managed like machines. Hard Times is the shortest of his big novels, fierce and funny, and its questions about education, industry and feeling are still very much alive.
Introduction
Charles Dickens (1812-1870) published Hard Times in 1854, first in weekly instalments in his magazine Household Words. It is the shortest of his full-length novels, and also one of the most pointed. Rather than the sprawling London of many of his books, it is set in the fictional Coketown, a city modelled on the industrial towns of the north of England, and it takes aim at the philosophies he thought were making modern life harsher.
The book is a satire of utilitarian thinking and of an educational system that valued statistics over imagination. It also looks hard at the relations between employers and workers in the factory age, though Dickens, who was no political theorist, was more interested in human consequences than in programmes. His most vivid creations here include the circus performers, whose generosity and fellow feeling are meant to contrast with the calculations of the respectable.
Critics have argued about the novel's merits ever since it appeared. Some find it too schematic, while others admire its compression and its moral energy. The debate has never quite ended.
This LibriVox recording has twenty-two chapters and lasts almost eleven hours. It is read by volunteers, and it is an excellent way to meet Dickens in a more concentrated mood. Listeners who enjoy Dickens for his comedy will find it here, as well as his anger. Those who know him chiefly from the longer novels may be struck by how much he achieves in a smaller space, and by how directly the book speaks to modern debates about schooling and work.
Public domain
Charles Dickens died in 1870: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text