A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Writings

by Charles Dickens

Overview

A Christmas Carol and other Christmas Writings:

A Christmas Carol,
A Christmas Tree,
What Christmas is as we Grow Older,
The Poor Relation's Story,
The Child's Story,
The Schoolboy's Story,
Nobody's Story.

The tale begins on Christmas Eve seven years after the death of Ebenezer Scrooge's business partner Jacob Marley. Scrooge is established within the first stave (chapter) as a greedy and stingy businessman who has no place in his life for kindness, compassion, charity, or benevolence. After being warned by Marley's ghost to change his ways, Scrooge is visited by three additional ghosts "each in its turn" who accompany him to various scenes with the hope of achieving his transformation.

The first of the spirits, the Ghost of Christmas Past, takes Scrooge to the scenes of his boyhood and youth which stir the old miser's gentle and tender side by reminding him of a time when he was more innocent. The second spirit, the Ghost of Christmas Present, takes Scrooge to several radically differing scenes (a joy-filled market of people buying the makings of Christmas dinner, the family feast of Scrooge's near-impoverished clerk Bob Cratchit, a miner's cottage, and a lighthouse among other sites) in order to evince from the miser a sense of responsibility for his fellow man. The third spirit, the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, harrows Scrooge with dire visions of the future if he does not learn and act upon what he has witnessed. Scrooge's own neglected and untended grave is revealed, prompting the miser to aver that he will change his ways in hopes of changing these "shadows of what may be."

In the fifth and final stave, Scrooge awakens Christmas morning with joy and love in his heart, then spends the day with his nephew's family after anonymously sending a prize turkey to the Crachit home for Christmas dinner. Scrooge has become a different man overnight, and now treats his fellow men with kindness, generosity, and compassion, gaining a reputation as a man who embodies the spirit of Christmas. The story closes with the narrator confirming the validity, completeness, and permanence of Scrooge's transformation.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781936594139
Publisher:	Tribeca Books
Publication date:	10/23/2010
Pages:	182
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Charles Dickens was born on February 7, 1812, in Landport, Portsea, England. He died in Kent on June 9, 1870. The second of eight children of a family continually plagued by debt, the young Dickens came to know not only hunger and privation,but also the horror of the infamous debtors’ prison and the evils of child labor. A turn of fortune in the shape of a legacy brought release from the nightmare of prison and “slave” factories and afforded Dickens the opportunity of two years’ formal schooling at Wellington House Academy. He worked as an attorney’s clerk and newspaper reporter until his Sketches by Boz (1836) and The Pickwick Papers (1837) brought him the amazing and instant success that was to be his for the remainder of his life. In later years, the pressure of serial writing, editorial duties, lectures, and social commitments led to his separation from Catherine Hogarth after twenty-three years of marriage. It also hastened his death at the age of fifty-eight, when he was characteristically engaged in a multitude of work.

Michael Slater is Emeritus Professor at Birkbeck College, London & a past President of the Dickens Fellowship & the Dickens Society of America.

Date of Birth:

February 7, 1812

Date of Death:

June 18, 1870

Place of Birth:

Portsmouth, England

Place of Death:

Gad's Hill, Kent, England

Education:

Home-schooling; attended Dame School at Chatham briefly and Wellington

Table of Contents

A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas WritingsA Dickens Chronology
Introduction
Further Reading
A Note on the Texts

Christmas Festivities

The Story Of The Goblins Who Stole A Sexton

A Christmas Episode From Master Humphrey's Clock

A Christmas Carol

The Haunted Man And The Ghost's Bargain

A Christmas Tree

What Christmas Is, As We Grow Older

The Seven Poor Travellers

Appendix I: Dickens's Prefaces to Collected Editions of The Christmas Books
Appendix II: Dickens's Descriptive Headlines for A Christmas Carol and The Haunted Man
Appendix III: Dickens and The Arabian Nights
Notes

Editorial Reviews

"A Christmas Carol] seems to be a national benefit, and to every man or woman who reads it a personal kindness."
--William Makepeace Thackeray

From the Publisher