A Christmas Carol (Barnes & Noble Edition): And Other Christmas Stories

By Charles Dickens and Grace Moore

Charles Dickens’A Christmas Carol is an endearing classic for the holiday season.  The stingy Ebenezer Scrooge learns the true meaning of Christmas when he encounters the Ghost of Christmas Past, the Ghost of Christmas Present, and the Ghost of Christmas future.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Barnes & Noble
• Release date: Sep 1, 2009
• ISBN: 9781411429918

Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens (1812-1870) was an English writer and social critic. Regarded as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era, Dickens had a prolific collection of works including fifteen novels, five novellas, and hundreds of short stories and articles. The term “cliffhanger endings” was created because of his practice of ending his serial short stories with drama and suspense. Dickens’ political and social beliefs heavily shaped his literary work. He argued against capitalist beliefs, and advocated for children’s rights, education, and other social reforms. Dickens advocacy for such causes is apparent in his empathetic portrayal of lower classes in his famous works, such as The Christmas Carol and Hard Times.

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INTRODUCTION

FEATURING SOME OF CHARLES DICKENS’ BEST-KNOWN AND best-loved characters, Ebenezer Scrooge, Bob Cratchit, Tiny Tim, and a trio of ghosts, A Christmas Carol has been an essential part of the holiday season for more than one hundred and fifty years. The enduring tale of the reformation of the miserly Scrooge has touched the hearts of generations of readers across the globe. With its combination of convivial festive celebrations, freezing weather, and otherworldly visitors, A Christmas Carol has come to embody the spirit of Christmas, reminding readers that it is a time for giving as well as receiving.

Charles John Huffam Dickens was born in Portsmouth, England, in 1812. His father, John Dickens, worked as a pay clerk for the royal navy and was known for his good nature and generosity. John struggled with debt for much of his adult life, however, and in 1824 he was arrested and imprisoned as a debtor in the Marshalsea Prison. John Dickens’ family joined him in the prison, with the exception of Charles who, at the age of twelve, was sent out to work at Warren’s Blacking Factory, pasting labels onto bottles of boot polish. The young Dickens was a deeply sensitive boy who found the experience to be humiliating and degrading. To add insult to injury, while he labored day after day, his elder sister Fanny continued to attend an expensive school of music. John Dickens was released from Marshalsea in May 1824, but Charles continued to work at the factory until his father quarrelled with the owner some weeks later. So traumatized was Dickens by these events, that he only confided his childhood sufferings to one friend during his lifetime, John Forster, who was later to become his biographer. Dickens was particularly distressed by the fact that his mother wanted him to continue with his work and protested when his father removed him from the position and sent him back to school. Although it was never published during his lifetime, Dickens wrote a brief autobiographical fragment in which he recounted the heartbreak evoked by his mother’s response I never afterwards forgot, I never shall forget, I never can forget, that my mother was warm for my being sent back.

The trauma of the Blacking Factory shaped the course of Dickens’ life. His brief taste of poverty left him terrified of returning to a life of drudgery, but it also gave him an acute understanding of the miseries of the poor and in particular the suffering of children. Dickens returned to school for a brief period, before being apprenticed to a legal firm as a clerk. He went on to work as a parliamentary reporter, writing up accounts of debates for newspapers, before joining the staff of his uncle’s new newspaper, The Mirror of Parliament. Watching debates in Parliament night after night, Dickens was moved by accounts of poverty, suffering, and attempts to improve conditions for the workforce through regulating factory legislation. While his position demanded impartial reporting, his experiences were later to be channelled into his portraits of working-class poverty in works like Oliver Twist (1837-9) and A Christmas Carol.

In addition to his duties as a reporter, the boundlessly energetic Dickens began to write short fictional sketches. Late in 1832, the twenty-year-old Dickens submitted one of his pieces to the Monthly Magazine to be considered for publication. It was published in December of the same year, and the magazine’s editor commissioned more short works from the young author. These pieces were eventually collected as Sketches by Boz—Boz being a childhood nickname. Then, in 1836, the publishers Chapman and Hall asked the young author to provide the text for a set of sporting illustrations by the artist Robert Seymour. In its early stages, the task was not a demanding one, but as Dickens sought more creative input, his characters became increasingly developed, and Mr. Pickwick of The Pickwick Papers (1836-1837) was born. Early sales were not good and when the depressive Seymour committed suicide in April 1836, Dickens took charge of the work, recasting it as a sequence of narratives that showcased his talents for comic realist writing.

Having married Catherine Hogarth, the daughter of a colleague, on April 2, 1836, Dickens must have welcomed this change in his circumstances. He gradually moved away from journalism into professional authorship, although as his novels appeared in serial format, he never left behind the journalistic pressure of writing for a deadline. While at the beginning of his career Dickens worked for other publishers as a paid author, in 1850 he founded his own weekly magazine, Household Words, which gave him creative control over his work. The journal was replaced in 1859 by All the Year Round, which took a similar format, mixing educational pieces with stories, poetry, and the latest instalment of a major novel. Sometimes these novels were by Dickens himself, while others were by up-and-coming contemporaries including Wilkie Collins and Elizabeth Gaskell. Dickens’ novels were extremely popular with Victorian readers from all classes. Serial publication meant that his works were cheaply available, and stories abound of illiterate working people gathering together so that a designated reader could regale them with the latest instalment of a Dickens novel that they had all clubbed together to read. A regular and greatly loved feature of both of Dickens’ magazines was the special Christmas number, which always included a much-anticipated tale. However, the best known of all of Dickens’ Christmas stories was published as a slender, stand-alone volume in December 1843.

Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol quickly in October and November of 1843, whilst also working on installments of his novel Martin Chuzzlewit. He had great hopes for the story’s commercial success, not least because it would help him to clear a debt to his publishers. In terms of its appearance, the volume was impressive, containing woodcuts by the artist John Leech, as well as four-colored plates. As the Dickens scholar Paul Schlicke has noted, the beauty of the book certainly made it more marketable as a holiday gift, but it also ate into Dickens’ profits (Schlicke, 98-99).

The book’s first print run was six thousand copies and it sold out within a matter of days. By early 1844, Dickens had sold around fifteen thousand copies. These sales figures were not particularly impressive in comparison to Dickens’ other works and this was partly because of problems with the advance advertising for the story. A further difficulty to hinder the Carol’s progress in the marketplace was a problem that had plagued Dickens for most of his career: literary piracy. An unauthorized edition of A Christmas Carol had been produced by the publishers Lee and Haddock in early January 1844, which would inevitably have cost Dickens sales. Although Dickens successfully prosecuted the firm, the pirates had themselves declared bankrupt, leaving him to foot the bill for the legal expenses. In spite of Dickens’ disappointment with sales, however, the Carol’s success can be measured in other ways. By February 1844 there had been eight stage productions of the story and it remained a firm favorite with Dickens’ public. Indeed, when in the final years of his life, Dickens undertook a sequence of demanding and highly popular public-reading tours, the story of Scrooge and Tiny Tim always formed part of the program.

A Christmas Carol was written in response to a visit Dickens paid to a ragged school for the poor in Field Lane, London. He had also been deeply moved by reports he had received from the social reformer Dr. Southwood Smith and had planned to produce a pamphlet in consultation with Smith to be titled An Appeal to the People of England on Behalf of the Poor Man’s Child. This plan seems to have given way to the writing of the story we know today. However Dickens’ depictions of the children of mankind, Want and Ignorance, who are shown to the miser Ebenezer Scooge by the Ghost of Christmas Present, have made a more lasting impression upon readers than any political tract. Dickens was able to address a much wider audience through his Christmas story, skilfully connecting the need for social change with the season of goodwill, thus promoting what he came to call a "Carol philosophy." This seems to have been a carefully considered strategy for managing public opinion and presenting a call for change in a way that would rally people to reform, rather than alienating them. Dickens wrote of these concerns to his friend the philanthropist Angela Burdett Coutts in September 1843:

My heart so sinks within me when I go into these scenes that I almost lose the hope of ever seeing them changed. Whether this effort will succeed, it is quite impossible to say. But that it is a great one, beginning at the right end, among thousands of immortal creatures, who cannot, in their present state, be held accountable for what they do, it is as impossible to doubt. That it is much too squalid and terrible to meet with any wide encouragement, I greatly fear. There is a kind of delicacy which is not at all shocked by the existence of such things, but is excessively shocked to know of them; and I am afraid it will shut its eye on Ragged Schools until the Ragged Scholars are perfect in their learning out of doors. (Dickens, Letters, 564)

Writing here of the ragged schools for paupers, Dickens highlights the lack of public concern with the plight of the very poor. He notes that it is poverty that creates crime and points out that well-intentioned members of the public seem unable to engage with or empathize with the plight of these impoverished children. Here Dickens astutely observes that unless someone intervenes, the ragged scholars will grow up into ignorant, resentful adults, who will force themselves into the public consciousness through misdemeanors for which they cannot be held responsible.

Dickens very cleverly transposed his experiences at the ragged school into A Christmas Carol by aligning the covetous, selfish Scrooge with those who are happy to go on ignoring the needs of the underclass. Very early on in the story, Scrooge responds to a plea for charity by asking whether prisons and workhouses are still in operation, thereby pointing to the way in which poverty had been criminalized in nineteenth-century England. The workhouses were institutions set up in response to the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act, which centralized relief aid for the poor, stigmatised poverty, and separated entire families. They were run by the parish and were often places of terror to the very poor, who lived in fear of being forced to resort to the austere charity of the state, in particular the work houses’ harsh discipline and meager diet.

In A Christmas Carol, Dickens hits out at the ideology behind the workhouses, the so-called utilitarian philosophy espoused by the political economist, Jeremy Bentham. Bentham believed that society should be governed according to the greatest happiness of the greatest number and he particularly favored a non-interventionist approach to government. Dickens was appalled by Bentham’s ideas, believing that they undermined a shared humanity and a collective responsibility for the underclass. The story of Scrooge shows a man’s development from selfish isolation to a life of sharing and community. While Scrooge is visited by three ghosts who help him to understand who he is and who he might become, the most haunting images of the story are those of misery and destitution. The meager, ragged, scowling, wolfish figures of Want and Ignorance represent not merely a supernatural vision, but rather a large section of Victorian society in dire need of assistance from men and women like Dickens’ first readers. Dickens’ friend John Forster commented in his biography on the great public and private service . . . positive, earnest, practical good (Forster, 206) achieved by A Christmas Carol and later Christmas stories like The Chimes (1844) and The Cricket on the Hearth (1845), thus pointing to the story’s practical role in bringing about social reform.

When Dickens died in June 1870, a young costermonger’s assistant is alleged to have asked, Mr. Dickens dead? Then will Father Christmas die as well? Whether or not this story is true, the fact that the anecdote has been passed down from generation to generation points to the inextricable links between Dickens and the holiday season. Christmas celebrations feature prominently in a large number of Dickens’ novels, including the Christmas high-jinks at Dingley Dell in The Pickwick Papers, the interrupted Christmas lunch in Great Expectations (1861), and the large number of Christmas books and stories which succeeded the Carol, as Dickens sought to build on his initial success. At a time when Queen Victoria’s husband, Prince Albert, had introduced the Christmas tree to Britain from Germany and

Reviews for A Christmas Carol (Barnes & Noble Edition)

[benuathanasia · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A beautiful story that can be read and appreciated at any age. The supplemental Christmas stories varied in quality, but that's to be expected.

[john257hopper · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Read just The Battle of LifeThis was the fourth of Dickens's Christmas stories. It starts off quite well, drawing a comparison between an old battle field and the struggles of modern (1846) life, but then peters out into dullness. Gave up about half way through.

[jseger9000 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I've loved watching various incarnations of A Christmas Carol since I was a kid. This year I decided to actually read the thing. By now I (like everyone else) am so familiar with the story that there aren't really any surprises. Just about every character, phrase and event is known almost by heart. But Dickens writing is wonderful. He constantly 'breaks the fourth wall' or whatever they would have called it in the days before TV, passing judgment on his characters and making asides to his readers. The book (novella really) might have started as a quicky cash-in, but Dickens obviously had a good time writing it and that feeling shows. There is absolute joy in the narrative. At times the dialog gets a little too cloyingly sweet (mainly when Scrooge is observing his nephew's or the Cratchit's Christmas parties), but it's a small sin.If you've not read the book, you owe it to yourself to do so, regardless of how many adaptations you've seen. At around a hundred and fifty pages, it is perfect to read in the days right before Christmas.

[theokester · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I've realized that despite years of watching A Christmas Carol every Christmas (either in movie or play form), I had never actually read the original text. So this year I decided to take some time and read the book prior to seeing the play. I wasn't disappointed...in fact, I was excited to see that the productions I've seen have been fairly true to the text.LanguageThe language is very true to the standard Victorian form and to other works of Dickens. The descriptions are ornate and flowery. The lists of objects, characteristics or actions are often lengthy and overly detailed. Once or twice, the language felt somewhat over-the-top and heavy-handed to the point that I wanted to "scan" rather than "read" the long paragraphs. Most of the time, the language was fluid and beautiful. I was truly drawn into Victorian England and the Christmases experienced by Ebenezer Scrooge.Characters / SettingThe characters from the story have become so well known that I was curious to see if the modern day interpretations varied much from the original. I was relieved to find that we've stayed true to Dickens' original character sketches. Apart from Scrooge not saying "Humbug" quite as often as I thought he would, the characters were very close to what I've come to know in 20th/21st century media.The ghosts seem to receive the most descriptive treatment which had some interesting variants I hadn't seen before. I've seen Christmas Past often presented as a female while the book shows this ghost in a more "male" light, although still somewhat genderless...mainly just kind of ancient. It was interesting to me also to read that Christmas Present was seen to age through the course of the journey so much so that he was on the verge of death by the time he left Scrooge. It gave me new perspective into his life as a spirit...he effectively lived only for that day...the "present" Christmas. When it was gone, so was he.The human characters were excellently treated, sometimes in just a few simple lines, other times with more description, but always just enough to be vivid and full of life.The settings were wonderfully outlined as per usual Dickens style. I truly felt myself in his world.Plot, Theme, Pacing, etc.Again, the plot is fairly commonplace after having seen it so many times. I tried to put myself in the perspective of a 19th century reader. Morality tales were certainly nothing new to Victorian readers. Nor were ghost stories. However, Dickens' treatment of a haunted morality tale set at Christmastime felt somewhat unique. Surely the story was seen as the social and human commentary that it was. The working class and the lower class surely loved the message of the story...that the upper class could reform its ways and see in its heart to help out those struggling at the bottom of society.The pacing was quick and the message was clear. This is something I could see reading aloud with my family next December.This Edition...the other storiesBefore wrapping up, I wanted to leave a comment on the other stories in the book. While I loved the title story in the book, the same adoration was felt as deeply for the other Dickens Christmas stories included in this book. Because A Christmas Carol is a fairly short story (only about 90 pages), the editors of this edition chose to include 3 additional Christmas tales by Dickens.

1. The first, "A Christmas Tree Story", was (to me) the most tedious "list" of a story I've read in a long time. It consisted of description after description of Christmas Tree ornaments and the branch on which they were hung. Towards the end of the story, it became slightly interesting by giving small descriptions of the "Ghost Stories" that "we" like to tell at Christmas gatherings. Unfortunately, each of these stories were incomplete and left me wishing Dickens would have devoted time to exploring those stories in depth rather than toiling over the mundane ornaments on the tree.
2. The second, "Nobody's Story", was an interesting social commentary providing thoughtful insight on the importance of any one person. While a vaguely interesting essay, I felt the way it was tied to Christmastime was loose at best. The best correlation would have been that of the Ghost of Christmas Present when he tells Scrooge that he (Scrooge) is worth less than Tiny Tim. Naturally, the commentary was better presented in Christmas Carol than it was in "Nobody's Story." I wonder if "Nobody's Story" was a predecessor to Carol and is perhaps indicative of Dickens desire to write such a tale.
3. The third and final story included, "What Christmas Is As We Grow Older", is even more enigmatic. Again, it is a sort of commentary on what people feel is important to them at different points in their lives. It's a good essay, but any "storytelling" element to it is superficial at best.

OverallDickens' Christmas Carol is truly a perennial classic that should be enjoyed year after year. Whether that enjoyment is through the book or through a well adapted movie or stage version (I've always loved the "George C Scott" version), it shouldn't matter much. Even the movie knock-offs (such as Bill Murray's "Scrooged" or other similar treatments) still have the good sense to promote the underlying themes of the tale.Like Scrooge, we should all seek to keep the spirit of Christmas with us throughout the year. I don't care what your religion is or what your beliefs are (and Dickens keeps religious narrative to a minimum despite the religious nature of the holiday...perhaps due to the overarching Christian audience, he didn't feel the need to promote the religious fervor). The themes and values taught by this Christmas Carol are morals that can and should be put in place by any member of the human race.Let us all make the welfare of 'mankind' be our 'business' for the future.*****5 stars