Hard Times (version 2 dramatic reading)
Author: first_name: Charles
last_name: Dickens
Language: English
Year: 1854

Charles Dickens' 1854 novel opens with the philosophy of education espoused by the eminently practical Mr. Gradgrind, who prizes "facts and calculations."  He raises his children, most prominently Louisa and Tom, to eschew imagination and emotion and embrace order and reason.  The results are disastrous: Louisa marries out of duty to the supposed self-made man Mr. Bounderby, while Tom grows up dissolute, ultimately commits theft and blames it on an unfortunate laborer, Stephen Blackpool.  Set in