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    Hard Times (dramatic reading)
    Hard Times (dramatic reading)
    Hard Times (dramatic reading)
    Audiobook12 hours

    Hard Times (dramatic reading)

    Written by Charles Dickens

    Narrated by LibriVox Community

    3/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    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 the fictional Coketown, a mill town in the north of England, Dickens' novel satirizes capitalism, social mobility, class stratification, and Utilitarianism. This dramatic reading of the novel features a full cast of LibriVox volunteers, who lend their voices to Dickens' vibrant comic characters. (Summary by Elizabeth Klett)

    Cast
    Narrator: Bob Neufeld
    Mr. Gradgrind: Marty Kris
    Sissy Jupe: J L Raimundo
    Bitzer: mb
    Gentleman: Tom Crawford
    Louisa Gradgrind: Arielle Lipshaw
    Mr. Bounderby: Andy Minter
    Mrs. Gradgrind: Beth Thomas
    Tom Gradgrind: Max Korlinge
    Mr. E. W. B. Childers: David Lawrence
    Master Kidderminster: Elizabeth Klett
    Mr. Sleary: Ron Altman
    Mrs. Sparsit: Elizabeth Klett
    Stephen Blackpool: Nigel Boydell
    Rachael: Karen Savage
    Mrs. Blackpool: Bev J. Stevens
    Mrs. Pegler: Sally McConnell
    James Harthouse: Algy Pug
    Slackbridge: John Steigerwald
    Voice 1: sylly
    Voice 2: J L Raimundo
    Jane Gradgrind: Goldfish
    Waiter: Nigel Boydell
    Man: Algy Pug
    Clown: Bev J. Stevens

    Text prepared by Arielle Lipshaw and Elizabeth Klett
    Audio edited by Elizabeth Klett

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherLibriVox
    Release dateAug 25, 2014
    Hard Times (dramatic reading)
    Author

    Charles Dickens

    Charles Dickens was born in 1812 and grew up in poverty. This experience influenced ‘Oliver Twist’, the second of his fourteen major novels, which first appeared in 1837. When he died in 1870, he was buried in Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey as an indication of his huge popularity as a novelist, which endures to this day.

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