Hard Times – a novel by Charles Dickens, an English writer who is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era.
Published in 1854, the story concerns one Thomas Gradgrind, a ‘fanatic of the demonstrable fact, ‘ who raises his children, Tom and Louisa, in a stifling and arid atmosphere of grim practicality. Without a moral compass to guide them, the children sink into lives of desperation and despair.