The Christmas Books — Special Christmas Edition

All five of Charles Dickens's Christmas Books, complete in one volume — in the texts of their first editions, with every one of the first editions' illustrations restored to its place.

A CHRISTMAS CAROL (1843) · THE CHIMES (1844) · THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH (1845) · THE BATTLE OF LIFE (1846) · THE HAUNTED MAN AND THE GHOST'S BARGAIN (1848)

In the winter of 1843 Dickens invented a new kind of book: a complete tale, bound like a gift, published days before Christmas — and A Christmas Carol sold out by Christmas Eve. He returned to the form four more times in five years. This Special Christmas Edition reunites all five for the first time in the Companion Classics series, printed from the first editions themselves. The Chimes, The Cricket on the Hearth, The Battle of Life and The Haunted Man were collated in full against scans of the first editions for this volume, and forty-four readings in which the familiar later texts depart from what Dickens first published are restored — each one verified on the page. Two dedications the collected editions dropped are restored with them.

All sixty-four illustrations listed in the first editions — sixty-five plates — are reproduced at their original positions: John Leech, Daniel Maclise, Richard Doyle, Clarkson Stanfield, Edwin Landseer, Frank Stone, and John Tenniel, whose work on The Haunted Man was his first commission for Dickens.

The Companion apparatus, written for this edition: an introduction to the five books as a set; an introduction and a Who's Who for each book; four explainers (the Christmas book as a literary form; Dickens and social protest; the goblin and fairy machinery across the five; Christmas and New Year — The Chimes is a New Year book); a short life of Dickens; a period note; a seasonal reading plan that carries the five books from the last week of November to New Year's Eve; 124 discussion questions, fenced book by book against spoilers; and a complete census of the illustrations.

153,642 words of fiction. Public domain worldwide.

Companion Classics · Charles Dickens · Edited by Horace Harriott Jr.