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Cover of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

A Christmas Carol

Charles Dickens

  • 114 pages · about 2 hours
  • First published 1843
  • 3,196 editions
  • Free to read
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1 About this book

A Christmas Carol. In Prose. Being a Ghost Story of Christmas, commonly known as A Christmas Carol, is a novella by Charles Dickens, first published in London by Chapman & Hall in 1843 and illustrated by John Leech. It recounts the story of Ebenezer Scrooge, an elderly miser who is visited by the ghost of his former business partner Jacob Marley and the spirits of Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come. In the process, Scrooge is transformed into a kinder, gentler man.

Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol during a period when the British were exploring and re-evaluating past Christmas traditions, including carols, and newer customs such as cards and Christmas trees. He was influenced by the experiences of his own youth and by the Christmas stories of other authors, including Washington Irving and Douglas Jerrold.

Summary adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)

  • Children's fiction
  • Drama
  • Ghosts
  • Christmas stories
  • Ghost stories
  • Social conditions
  • Misers
  • Poor families

2 What to expect

The famous Christmas ghost story: on Christmas Eve the miser Ebenezer Scrooge is visited by the ghost of his dead partner and by three spirits who show him his past, his present and what may come. It is a short moral tale about greed, poverty and generosity, by turns comic, eerie and sentimental, with a narrator who speaks to his audience directly. It can be read in an evening, and it reads aloud well.

Good for readers who want: a Christmas classic, a ghost story with a moral, and a very short read.

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4 About Charles Dickens

1812–1870

Charles John Huffam Dickens ( ; 7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English writer and journalist. He created some of literature's best-known fictional characters, and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era. His works enjoyed unprecedented popularity during his lifetime and, by the 20th century, critics and scholars had recognised him as a literary genius. His novels and short stories are widely read today.

Bio adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)

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