A Christmas Carol — The Companion Edition

The ghost story that invented the modern Christmas — in the words Dickens actually published.

This Companion Classics edition prints the text of the first edition (Chapman & Hall, 19 December 1843), restored by collation: Project Gutenberg's text was checked line by line against a facsimile of the 1843 printing, and twenty-one readings that later texts smoothed away are back where Dickens put them — down to his own spelling of "chesnuts." The five staves keep their 1843 headings, and all eight of John Leech's original illustrations are here: the four hand-coloured etchings, including the frontispiece "Mr. Fezziwig's Ball," and the four wood engravings that close their staves.

Around the story stands a full companion apparatus, written for this edition:

• An introduction — how Dickens, stung by a government report on child labour and the sight of a ragged school, scrapped a pamphlet, wrote the Carol in six weeks of "white heat," published it at his own risk, sold out 6,000 copies by Christmas Eve — and was pirated within the month.

• A Who's Who of every character, from Marley and the three Spirits to Ignorance and Want.

• Four explainers: the Victorian Christmas revival (the first commercial Christmas card appeared the same year), the 1834 Poor Law and the workhouses behind "Are there no prisons?", counting-house London, and how the haunting is built.

• A short life of Charles Dickens, a guide to period money and customs, a reading schedule, and forty spoiler-aware discussion questions, fenced stave by stave.

Charles Dickens (1812–1870) wrote A Christmas Carol in the autumn of 1843; it has never been out of print since. John Leech (1817–1864) illustrated the first edition. The text and illustrations are public domain worldwide.

Format: EPUB, 28,579 words including Dickens's Preface; reads in one sitting — as Dickens intended.