Oliver Cromwell and the Roundheads, Scrooges all, had banned any celebration of the holiday in the 1600s the subsequent advent of the Industrial Revolution kept factories humming with nary a thought for yuletide. Ebenezer Scrooge remains one of the great villains of literature, “a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner,” winding his way through the snowy back alleys of mid-19 th Century London with a sneering “Bah, humbug!” at the ready for any urchin unfortunate enough to cross his path.īut with the help of four spirits over five “staves,” Scrooge transforms from heartless skinflint to vessel of charity and mercy, discovering the magic of a season that, in the salving words of his sunny nephew, Fred, represents “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.”Įngland had been in something of a Christmas hangover before Dickens’ shimmering little chronicle changed everything. Date: 1991.It’s been 178 years since Charles Dickens, stung by commercial indifference to his most recent novel, Martin Chuzzlewit, spent six weeks walking deserted streets after midnight for inspiration, returning to his fashionable townhouse to madly scribble out a novella that would forever change the way we celebrate the yuletide.

After their visits Scrooge is transformed into a kinder, gentler man. A Christmas Carol tells the story of Ebenezer Scrooge, an old miser who is visited by the ghost of his former business partner Jacob Marley and the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come. Being a Ghost Story of Christmas.Illustrator John LeechCountry EnglandPublished 19 December 1843Publisher Chapman & HallText A Christmas Carol at WikisourceA 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 the first edition was illustrated by John Leech. A Christmas CarolCharles Dickens-A Christmas Carol-Cloth-First Edition 1843.jpgFirst edition cover (1843)Author Charles DickensOriginal title A Christmas Carol.

Octavo (8' x 6 1/4') bound in original publisher's wrappers. 131 pages with frontispiece, illustrated title, pictorial end papers and illustrations throughout by Michael Foreman.

A christmas carol original book