A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Stories [Paperback]

A delightful holiday collection that includes “A Christmas Carol” and other classic Charles Dickens Christmas stories.

As much a part of Christmas as mistletoe and carolers, Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” was once read publicly on Christmas Eve each year by Dickens himself. This heartwarming tale continues to stir in us the same feelings of repentance, forgiveness, and love that transformed Ebenezer Scrooge from grumbling, “Bah!  Humbug!” to sharing Tiny Tim's happy “God bless us, every one!”
 
Dickens’s other Christmas stories prove as rich as his most famous. “A Christmas Tree” describes a Victorian Christmas as seen through a child’s delighted eyes. “Christmas Dinner” celebrates the reunion of a divided family, while the Christmas chapters fromThe Pickwick Papersmove from the exhilaration of a Christmas wedding to a shivery ghost story that foreshadows the spirits seen by Scrooge. Warmly nostalgic and beautifully written, the Christmas stories of Charles Dickens deserve a very special place in our memories and our hearts.Charles Dickenswas born on February 7, 1812, at Landport, near Portsmouth, England. He died at Gads Hill, his home in Kent, on June 9, 1870. The second of eight children in a family often plagued by debt, Dickens at ten saw his father arrested and confined in the Marshalsea, a debtors’ prison in London, and although a small boy he was placed in a blacking factory where he worked at labeling bottles, visiting John Dickens on Sundays. Charles returned to school on his father’s release, taught himself shorthand, and at sixteen became a parliamentary reporter. At twenty-four his career took off with the publication ofSketches by Boz(1836), which was followed byPickwick Papersthe next year. As a novelist and magazine editor he had a long run of serialized successes throughOur Mutual Frienló.