Abstract. We consider the hyperbolic Hardy class H p (B), 0 < p < ∞. It consists of φ holomorphic in the unit complex ball B for which |φ| < 1 andwhere denotes the hyperbolic distance of the unit disc. The hyperbolic version of the Littlewood-Paley type g-function and the area function are defined in terms of the invariant gradient of B, and membership of H p (B) is expressed by the L p property of the functions. As an application, we can characterize the boundedness and the compactness of the composition operator C φ , defined by C φ f = f • φ, from the Bloch space into the Hardy space H p (B).