Â
Â
FREE ‘Hard Times and Reprinted Pieces’ HD Audio Book (Dramatic Version) can be downloaded from the Microsoft One Drive Download link  Amazon's Kindle does not allow this audio book to be published in your region. It is real fun to listen to specially during a Long Drive.
Hard Times is the tenth novel by Charles Dickens, first published in 1854. The book appraises English society and highlights the social and economic pressures of the times. Superintendent Mr. Gradgrind opens the novel at his school in Coketown stating, "Now, what I want is, Facts" , and interrogates one of his pupils, Sissy, whose father works at a circus. Because her father works with horses, Gradgrind demands the definition of 'horse'. When she is scolded for inability to define a horse factually, her classmate Bitzer gives a zoological profile; and Sissy is censured for suggesting that she would carpet a floor with pictures of flowers.