description: In the polluted and poverty-ridden Coketown, Louisa and Tom Gradgrind endure a loveless childhood with their self-satisfied and unimaginative father. Starved of affection, Louisa is forced into a miserable marriage with a man thirty years her senior, while Tom descends into a secret life of theft. Into this squalor comes Sissy Jupe, a circus child whose ailing father abandoned her. When she is adopted by Tom, Sissy and her circus colleagues help combat the pervading gloom and offer the hope of redemption in this brilliant satire on the Victorian family teeming with tension and conflict.
language: English
title: Hard Times
titlecomplete: Hard Times
characters: Mr. M'Choakumchild, Mrs. Sparsit, Stephen Blackpool, Louisa Gradgrind, James Harthouse, Sissy Jupe, Josiah Bounderby, Thomas Gradgrind
genres: Literature, Classics, School, Novels, Classic Literature, Victorian, 19th Century, Historical Fiction, Fiction, British Literature
ratings_count: 66502
places: Coketown
publisher: BBC Audiobooks