num_pages: 300
description: "Facts alone are wanted in life." The children at Mr Gradgrind's school are sternly ordered to stifle their imaginations and pay attention only to cold, hard reality. They live in a smoky, troubled industrial town where entertainment is hard to come by and resentments run deep. The effects of Gradgrind's teaching on his own children, Tom and Louisa, are particularly profound and leave them ill-equipped to deal with the unpredictable desires of the human heart. Luckily for them they have a friend in Sissy Jupe, the child of a circus clown, who retains her warm-hearted, compassionate nature despite the pressures around her.
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: Signet Classics