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    A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens (Illustrated)
    A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens (Illustrated)
    A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens (Illustrated)
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    A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens (Illustrated)

    By Charles Dickens

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    About this ebook

    This eBook features the unabridged text of ‘A Christmas Carol’ from the bestselling edition of ‘The Complete Works of Charles Dickens’.

    Having established their name as the leading publisher of classic literature and art, Delphi Classics produce publications that are individually crafted with superior formatting, while introducing many rare texts for the first time in digital print. The Delphi Classics edition of Dickens includes original annotations and illustrations relating to the life and works of the author, as well as individual tables of contents, allowing you to navigate eBooks quickly and easily.

    eBook features:
    * The complete unabridged text of ‘A Christmas Carol’
    * Beautifully illustrated with images related to Dickens’s works
    * Individual contents table, allowing easy navigation around the eBook
    * Excellent formatting of the textPlease visit www.delphiclassics.com to learn more about our wide range of titles
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPublishdrive
    Release dateJul 17, 2017
    ISBN9781786567062
    A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens (Illustrated)
    Author

    Charles Dickens

    Charles Dickens was born in 1812 and grew up in poverty. This experience influenced ‘Oliver Twist’, the second of his fourteen major novels, which first appeared in 1837. When he died in 1870, he was buried in Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey as an indication of his huge popularity as a novelist, which endures to this day.

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      Book preview

      A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens (Illustrated) - Charles Dickens

      The Complete Works of

      CHARLES DICKENS

      VOLUME 21 OF 64

      A Christmas Carol

      Parts Edition

      By Delphi Classics, 2015

      Version 13

      COPYRIGHT

      ‘A Christmas Carol’

      Charles Dickens: Parts Edition (in 64 parts)

      First published in the United Kingdom in 2017 by Delphi Classics.

      © Delphi Classics, 2017.

      All rights reserved.  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form other than that in which it is published.

      ISBN: 978 1 78656 706 2

      Delphi Classics

      is an imprint of

      Delphi Publishing Ltd

      Hastings, East Sussex

      United Kingdom

      Contact: sales@delphiclassics.com

      www.delphiclassics.com

      Charles Dickens: Parts Edition

      This eBook is Part 21 of the Delphi Classics edition of Charles Dickens in 64 Parts. It features the unabridged text of A Christmas Carol from the bestselling edition of the author’s Complete Works. Having established their name as the leading publisher of classic literature and art, Delphi Classics produce publications that are individually crafted with superior formatting, while introducing many rare texts for the first time in digital print. Our Parts Editions feature original annotations and illustrations relating to the life and works of Charles Dickens, as well as individual tables of contents, allowing you to navigate eBooks quickly and easily.

      Visit here to buy the entire Parts Edition of Charles Dickens or the Complete Works of Charles Dickens in a single eBook.

      Learn more about our Parts Edition, with free downloads, via this link or browse our most popular Parts here.

      CHARLES DICKENS

      IN 64 VOLUMES

      Parts Edition Contents

      1, A Dinner at Poplar Walk

      The Novels

      2, The Pickwick Papers

      3, Oliver Twist

      4, Nicholas Nickleby

      5, The Old Curiosity Shop

      6, Barnaby Rudge

      7, Martin Chuzzlewit

      8, Dombey and Son

      9, David Copperfield

      10, Bleak House

      11, Hard Times

      12, Little Dorrit

      13, A Tale of Two Cities

      14, Great Expectations

      15, Our Mutual Friend

      16, The Mystery of Edwin Drood

      Droodiana

      17, The Cloven Foot by Robert Henry Newell

      18, John Jasper’s Secret by Henry Morford

      19, Part Second of the Mystery of Edwin Drood by Thomas James

      20, A Great Mystery Solved by Gillan Vase

      The Christmas Novellas

      21, A Christmas Carol

      22, The Chimes

      23, The Cricket on the Hearth

      24, The Battle of Life

      25, The Haunted Man and the Ghost’s Bargain

      The Short Story Collections

      26, Sketches by Boz

      27, Master Humphrey’s Clock

      28, Christmas Numbers of ‘Household Words’

      29, Christmas Numbers of ‘All the Year Round’

      30, Miscellaneous Short Stories

      31, Reprinted Pieces

      The Plays

      32, The Strange Gentleman

      33, The VIllage Coquettes

      34, Is She His Wife?

      35, The Lamplighter

      36, Mr. Nightingale’s Diary

      37, The Frozen Deep

      38, No Thoroughfare

      The Poetry

      39, The Collected Poetry of Charles Dickens

      The Non-Fiction

      40, Memoirs of Joseph Grimaldi by Thomas Egerton Wilks

      41, American Notes

      42, Pictures from Italy

      43, The Life of Our Lord

      44, A Child’s History of England

      45, The Uncommercial Traveller

      46, The Speeches

      47, The Letters

      48, Miscellaneous Papers

      The Adaptations

      49, Tales from Dickens by Hallie Erminie Rives

      50, Dickens’ Children by Jessie Willcox Smith

      51, Dickens’ Stories About Children Every Child Can Read by Jesse Lyman Hurlbut

      52, Sam Weller by W. T. Moncrieff

      53, Oliver Twist by Charles Zachary Barnett

      54, Nicholas Nickleby by Edward Stirling

      55, The Old Curiosity Shop by Edward Stirling

      The Criticism

      56, The Criticism

      The Biographies

      57, The Life of Charles Dickens by John Forster

      58, Forster’s Life of Dickens by George Gissing

      59, Dickens by Sir Adolphus William Ward

      60, Life of Charles Dickens by Sir Frank T. Marzials

      61, Victorian Worthies: Charles Dickens by G. H. Blore

      62, Dickens’ London by M. F. Mansfield

      63, My Father as I Recall Him by Mamie Dickens

      64, Brief Biography by Leslie Stephen

      www.delphiclassics.com

      A Christmas Carol

      Charles Dickens is forever associated with Christmas. It was reported that when he died in 1870 a costermonger’s daughter was overheard to say, Mr. Dickens dead? Then will Father Christmas die too?

      Perhaps his feelings about Christmas are best summed up by one of his children who recorded that for Dickens, Christmas was a great time, a really jovial time, and my father was always at his best, a splendid host, bright and jolly as a boy and throwing his heart and soul into everything that was going on...

      Dickens himself defined its essence through the words he placed in the mouth of Scrooge’s nephew, Fred, in A Christmas Carol, when he describes the season as a good time: a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of other people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. For the author this speech was to encapsulate what became known as his ‘Carol Philosophy.’

      The tradition of Christmas celebration had gradually declined in the early nineteenth century and as Thomas Hervey noted in his writings, ‘The revels of merry England are fast subsiding into silence and her many customs are wearing gradually away.’ He blamed it on the urban drift by the rural population as towns and cities became the providers of work. Dickens did not invent Christmas, but he certainly helped to resurrect it by moving it to an urban setting — London to be precise — and replacing the manorial hall with the town house while still rousing nostalgia for the Christmas spirit he evoked at Dingley Dell. The idyllic winter countryside had been replaced by the claustrophobic fogbound city of London and the old squirearchy by the burgeoning middle class and the urban working poor.  As Professor Richard Kelly points out in his edition of A Christmas Carol, ‘Dickens seems to be saying Christmas can now be celebrated by anyone; its rituals and joys are no longer the exclusive province of the upper classes in their country estates.’

      Washington Irving, an American writer greatly admired by Dickens, was a significant influence upon his Christmas writings. Irving travelled extensively in Europe and in Bracebridge Hall he celebrated the Christmas festivities and traditions of rural England. Although Prince Albert had introduced the Christmas tree to English households, the first Christmas card was sent in 1843 and the singing of carols was undergoing a revival, the real catalyst was the publication of A Christmas Carol on 6 December, 1843. It had been written between October and November of that year in six weeks. As he wrote to his American friend, Cornelius Felton, ‘Over which Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens wept, and laughed, and wept again, and excited himself in a most extraordinary manner, in the composition; and thinking whereof, he walked about the black streets of London, fifteen and twenty miles, many a night when all sober folks had gone to bed.’

      Although Dickens was to write several stories and articles upon the theme of Christmas, the best of these and the one that helped to re-establish this festive occasion as an important tradition was this one. The novella grew out of a visit to Cornish tin mines that used child labour and a visit in September to Field Lane Ragged School. As he wrote to his friend and philanthropist Miss Burdett-Coutts with whom he was to work with in the future, he had not seen almost anywhere ‘anything so shocking as the dire neglect of soul and body exhibited in these children’. Initially, he intended to write a pamphlet entitled an ‘Appeal to the People of England on behalf of the Poor Man’s child’ but thankfully for us he realised that his skills as a novelist would create a greater impact on his readers and so it proved.

      The genesis of the novel may well have been a short story which was recounted by Mr. Wardle at Dingley Dell on Christmas Eve from the famous scene in The Pickwick Papers. Gabriel Grub, a sexton and gravedigger is a misanthropic character, who prefers digging graves to celebrating Christmas. However, he is confronted by goblins that present him with terrifying visions, which alter him as a man and help to redeem him. This was the precursor of his supreme expression of the Christmas ideal which was to follow in 1843, during what was aptly called the ‘Hungry Forties.’

      His other purpose in writing this story was to secure his finances as his latest novel, Martin Chuzzlewit, had not sold as well as he had hoped. Sadly, neither did he make much money from A Christmas Carol, due to the lavish edition he designed with its red cloth cover with gilt lettering, gilt edges to the pages and the Punch artist John Leech’s eight illustrations, four of which were full colour etchings. Added to which it sold for the moderate price of five shillings. Even though it sold well it made little money at first, for which he blamed his publishers Chapman and Hall, whom he left soon after. Dickens called it ‘a most prodigious success – the greatest, I think, I have ever achieved.’ And brisk sales ensured that by 24 December 6,000 copies had been sold.

      Peter Ackroyd, one of Dickens’ outstanding biographers, has noted the similarities between some of the characters and themes of Martin Chuzzlewit and A Christmas Carol, seeing the latter as a reworking of the former, but in fantasy form where the common themes of greed, selfishness and their impact

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