Hard Times (dramatic reading): Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

Hard Times (dramatic reading), credited to Charles Dickens, is available as a LibriVox volunteer audiobook. This guide identifies the recording, its source summary and its audio tracks.

About the work

The LibriVox catalogue summary, preserved with the recording, reads:

LibriVox recording of Hard Times by Charles Dickens. Read by Bob Neufeld, with a full cast. 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)

Recording facts

• Recording title: Hard Times (dramatic reading)
• Author credits: Charles Dickens
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 37
• Listed recording duration: 12:00:43

Catalogue topics

• audio
• dickens
• novel
• dramatic reading

Opening tracks: first 24 of 37

1. 01 - Book 1, Chapter 01, The One Thing Needful — 4:36
2. 02 - Book 1, Chapter 02, Murdering the Innocents — 15:12
3. 03 - Book 1, Chapter 03, A Loophole — 13:07
4. 04 - Book 1, Chapter 04, Mr. Bounderby — 18:11
5. 05 - Book 1, Chapter 05, The Keynote — 14:36
6. 06 - Book 1, Chapter 06, Sleary's Horsemanship — 33:01
7. 07 - Book 1, Chapter 07, Mrs. Sparsit — 16:52
8. 08 - Book 1, Chapter 08, Never Wonder — 13:38
9. 09 - Book 1, Chapter 09, Sissy's Progress — 16:57
10. 10 - Book 1, Chapter 10, Stephen Blackpool — 13:52
11. 11 - Book 1, Chapter 11, No Way Out — 17:50
12. 12 - Book 1, Chapter 12, The Old Woman — 13:32
13. 13 - Book 1, Chapter 13, Rachael — 20:07
14. 14 - Book 1, Chapter 14, The Great Manufacturer — 12:36
15. 15 - Book 1, Chapter 15, Father and Daughter — 19:46
16. 16 - Book 1, Chapter 16, Husband and Wife — 15:04
17. 17 - Book 2, Chapter 01, Effects in the Bank — 34:16
18. 18 - Book 2, Chapter 02, Mr. James Harthouse — 21:23
19. 19 - Book 2, Chapter 03, The Whelp — 12:40
20. 20 - Book 2, Chapter 04, Men and Brothers — 21:11
21. 21 - Book 2, Chapter 05, Men and Masters — 16:31
22. 22 - Book 2, Chapter 06, Fading Away — 30:47
23. 23 - Book 2, Chapter 07, Gunpowder — 31:01
24. 24 - Book 2, Chapter 08, Explosion — 32:26

Listen to this recording

Open the complete recording and player on Internet Archive. The player includes the full track list and available download formats.

Source and rights

This is a record from LibriVox's official Internet Archive collection, with a public-domain licence recorded in its metadata. LibriVox's policy includes its catalogue summaries as well as its recordings. Its public-domain assessment follows United States law; copyright status can differ elsewhere. The summary and track facts are reproduced and reformatted from that record. Dates attached to the archive upload are not treated as original book publication dates.