Hard Times

This DigiSync Book is a new audio / ebook format – read and listen separately or do both at


the same time. Top-quality readings and performances synced word for word with classic 


texts. Simple to navigate, with numbered pages and easy book marking and searching. 







Hard Times, by Charles Dickens, is recorded by Naxos Audio. This DigiSync Book edition


was prepared by DigiSync Books Ltd.




The book appraises English society and is aimed at highlighting the social and economic


pressures of the times and is Dickens’s most political novel. Set in the industrial north


of England, in the fictional Coketown, he examines the lives of working people, who are 


taught by the capitalists Gradgrind and Bounderby to think only of the facts of life and not 


to indulge in imagination. Gradgrind’s own children have been educated thus, and as a 


result are dysfunctional and disconnected from their feelings. Only Sleary’s travelling circus 


company seems to offer any hope of humanity in Coketown. Hard Times is a deeply moving 


story written in anger to strike a blow for the victims of the dehumanising processes of 


industry.




READING FOR YOUR EYES AND EARS