Everybody knows A Christmas Carol, but the prolific Charles Dickens wrote several other holiday tales. Here, Dreamscape Media has compiled a collection of.
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- Christmas Stories (from All the Year Around and Household Words)
- 4 Dickens Christmas Stories You’ve Probably Never Heard Of
- Christmas Stories by Charles Dickens
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Listening to these Dickens stories was a great way to get into the Christmas spirit. And you can never go wrong with David Timson as narrator. These are the annual holiday-themed stories Dickens published in his Household Words journal. These stories made Mr. Dickens the prophet of home life.
He brought imagination into the winter homes and told his readers that comfort, a cozy fire under the hearth, spiced wine, and a good story made home-staying worthwhile. In this collection of his Christmas tales, Dickens combined goodwill with tales of shipwrecks and orphans and traditions. There aren't any ghosts of Christmas past nor the haunted recollections of doomed men. Instead, the reader gets a poverty-stricken man relating his "castle in the air" or a narrator describing the various country inns of Yorkshire, "haunted by the ghost of a tremendous pie".
Reading of adventures on the high seas when the weather outside your own home is cold is always worthwhile. Not every story whammed me and I probably do love his actual books of Christmas season more mostly because of the haunted tales , but these were a worthwhile read. Sep 23, Sarah rated it liked it. In light of Goodreads' new censorship policy, I am no longer posting reviews on this site.
Please read it here. Three stars solely for "A Christmas Carol"; the rest are forgettable or cheesy or both. There is certainly a reason why these "other" Dickens Christmas stories are largely forgotten. Pero es una buena oportunidad para acercarse a la obra de Dickens y leerlo en Navidad ha sido una delicia. Oct 28, Jason Furman rated it liked it Shelves: After The Christmas Carol Dickens wrote four more Christmas novellas, generally of declining although still high quality.
These issues would generally have a framing story by Dickens, several stories that fit the frame by the co-authors he selected with one or two by Dickens himself, and then a concluding story by Dickens. For example, in Somebody's Luggage the framing story is about After The Christmas Carol Dickens wrote four more Christmas novellas, generally of declining although still high quality. For example, in Somebody's Luggage the framing story is about luggage that has been left in the room of an inn for years and the individual stories were all found in the luggage.
Hesperus Classics has republished all of these original volumes so you can read them in their entirety and put the Dickens contributions in the context he created. It is an interesting way to experience them, although I only read two or three of the volumes from beginning to end, will look forward to reading more of them. But even if you just read Dickens' stories, it is helpful to have the full volume to get a better context.
All of that said, the large majority of the stories are not particularly spectacular. And it is not like reading Sketches by Boz, which is a little uneven but has a lot of great moments and is like a foreshadowing of what is to come. Instead, these were written at the same time as Dickens' greatest novels and generally appear to be a little rushed.
Christmas Stories (from All the Year Around and Household Words)
There's a reason people don't generally buy Dickens short stories collections. But there is a lot of humor and warmth, drama and melodrama, and interest, in a number of these stories. Often the frame itself is more interesting and characters more compelling than the stories themselves.
So worth dipping into, at least once you've read everything else. Dickens as a master storyteller here. I bought this on an antiques stall, and dipped in over Christmas for some Victorian nostalgia. I wasn't disappointed but what really struck me was how Dickens could make a story out of anything and many of these stories contain stories within stories without ever getting boring. Dickens just never fails to grab your attention, and even though written so long ago in the style of the time, it's still fresh.
There are hundreds of stories in this volume which al Dickens as a master storyteller here. There are hundreds of stories in this volume which also includes a selection of tales from Italy and they have all been collected from Dickens magazine contributions over many years, so I didn't read them all, but limited myself to the Christmas period, so that I can read some more next year. I doubt if this book is available now but if you should spot it somewhere, and you like an old fashioned Christmas, I'd recommend it. Sadly, this book left me utterly unimpressed. The writing was beautiful as one might expect from an author like that, but the stories themselves were rather dull, as far as stories go.
The narrator did a great job, but it was not enough for me to actually care for any of the characters. These are the hidden treasures that are often overlooked in the spotlight of The Christmas Carol. Dickens amplifies the cricket chirps and chapel chimes that blend into the background, forgotten. Dickens gives his reader glimpses into the lens of the myriad lives of the simpleminded to shrewd, fathers to lovers, the broken hearted and blind.
4 Dickens Christmas Stories You’ve Probably Never Heard Of
He grapples with themes of social justice, unconditional forgiveness, familial and hierarchical relationships. Through the disparate narratives of diverse c These are the hidden treasures that are often overlooked in the spotlight of The Christmas Carol. Through the disparate narratives of diverse characters, Dickens' narratives comfort, challenge and commission: Let us welcome everyone of them, and summon them to take their places by the Christmas hearth.
Dec 01, Alexander Kot rated it liked it. By 24 October Dickens invited Leech to work on A Christmas Carol , and four hand-coloured etchings and four black-and-white wood engravings by the artist accompanied the text. The central character of A Christmas Carol is Ebenezer Scrooge, a miserly London-based moneylender, [30] described in the story as "a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner! This psychological conflict may be responsible for the two radically different Scrooges in the tale—one a cold, stingy and greedy semi-recluse, the other a benevolent, sociable man.
Scrooge could also be based on two misers: Elwell, Scrooge's views on the poor are a reflection of those of the demographer and political economist Thomas Malthus , [36] while the miser's questions "Are there no prisons? And the Union workhouses? The treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigour, then? There are literary precursors for Scrooge in Dickens's own works. Peter Ackroyd , Dickens's biographer, sees similarities between the character and the elder Martin Chuzzlewit character, although the miser is "a more fantastic image" than the Chuzzlewit patriarch; Ackroyd observes that Chuzzlewit's transformation to a charitable figure is a parallel to that of the miser.
The grave was for Ebenezer Lennox Scroggie, whose job was given as a meal man—a corn merchant; Dickens misread the inscription as "mean man". When Dickens was young he lived near a tradesman's premises with the sign "Goodge and Marney", which may have provided the name for Scrooge's former business partner.
The transformation of Scrooge is central to the story.
Christmas Stories by Charles Dickens
Other writers, including Kelly, consider that Dickens put forward a "secular vision of this sacred holiday". Jordan argues that A Christmas Carol shows what Dickens referred to in a letter to Foster as his " Carol philosophy, cheerful views, sharp anatomisation of humbug, jolly good temper Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol because of how British social policy treated children at the time, and wished to use the novella as a means to put forward his arguments against it. As the result of the disagreements with Chapman and Hall over the commercial failures of Martin Chuzzlewit , [63] Dickens arranged to pay for the publishing himself, in exchange for a percentage of the profits.
The first printing contained drab olive endpapers that Dickens felt were unacceptable, and the publisher Chapman and Hall quickly replaced them with yellow endpapers, but, once replaced, those clashed with the title page, which was then redone. Chapman and Hall issued second and third editions before the new year, and the book continued to sell well into According to Douglas-Fairhurst, contemporary reviews of A Christmas Carol "were almost uniformly kind". The last two people I heard speak of it were women; neither knew the other, or the author, and both said, by way of criticism, 'God bless him!
The poet Thomas Hood , in his own journal , wrote that "If Christmas, with its ancient and hospitable customs, its social and charitable observances, were ever in danger of decay, this is the book that would give them a new lease. There were critics of the book. The New Monthly Magazine praised the story, but thought the book's physical excesses—the gilt edges and expensive binding—kept the price high, making it unavailable to the poor. The review recommended that the tale should be printed on cheap paper and priced accordingly. Following criticism of the US in American Notes and Martin Chuzzlewit , American readers were less enthusiastic at first, but by the end of the American Civil War , copies of the book were in wide circulation.
In January Parley's Illuminated Library published an unauthorised version of the story in a condensed form which they sold for twopence. I have not the least doubt that if these Vagabonds can be stopped they must. Let us be the sledge-hammer in this, or I shall be beset by hundreds of the same crew when I come out with a long story. Two days after the release of the Parley version, Dickens sued on the cases of copyright infringement and won. Dickens returned to the tale several times during his life to amend the phrasing and punctuation.
He capitalised on the success of the book by publishing other Christmas stories The Chimes , The Cricket on the Hearth , The Battle of Life and The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain ; these were secular conversion tales which reflected the societal changes of the previous year, and which social problems still needed to be dealt with. While the public eagerly bought the later books, the reviewers were highly critical of the stories. By Dickens was engaged with David Copperfield and had neither the time nor the inclination to produce another Christmas book.
In the years following the book's publication, responses to the tale were published by W.
The novella was adapted for the stage almost immediately. Three productions opened on 5 February , with one by Edward Stirling sanctioned by Dickens and running for more than 40 nights. Davis considers the adaptations have become better remembered than the original. Some of Dickens's scenes — visiting the miners and lighthouse keepers — have been forgotten by many, while other add scenes—such as Scrooge visiting the Cratchits on Christmas Day, which many think are part of the original story.
Accordingly, Davis identifies the original text, and the "remembered version". The phrase " Merry Christmas " had been around for many years — the earliest known written use was in a letter in — but Dickens's use of the term in A Christmas Carol popularised the term among the Victorian public. In the early 19th century the celebration of Christmas was associated in Britain with the countryside and peasant revels, disconnected to the increasing urbanisation and industrialisation taking place.
Davis considers that in A Christmas Carol , Dickens showed that Christmas could be celebrated in towns and cities, despite increasing modernisation. The Oxford Movement of the s and s had produced a resurgence of the traditional rituals and religious observances associated with Christmastide and, with A Christmas Carol , Dickens captured the zeitgeist while he reflected and reinforced his vision of Christmas.
Dickens advocated a humanitarian focus of the holiday, [] which influenced several aspects of Christmas that are still celebrated in Western culture, such as family gatherings, seasonal food and drink, dancing, games and a festive generosity of spirit. The novelist William Dean Howells , analysing several of Dickens's Christmas stories, including A Christmas Carol , considered that by the "pathos appears false and strained; the humor largely horseplay; the characters theatrical; the joviality pumped; the psychology commonplace; the sociology alone funny".
Ruth Glancy, a professor of English literature, states that the largest impact of A Christmas Carol was the influence felt by individual readers. Chesterton wrote "The beauty and blessing of the story Whether the Christmas visions would or would not convert Scrooge, they convert us.
Davis, analysing the changes made to adaptations over time, sees changes to the focus of the story and its characters to reflect mainstream thinking of the period.
While Dickens's Victorian audiences would have viewed the tale as a spiritual but secular parable, in the early 20th century it became a children's story, read by parents who remembered their parents reading it when they were younger. In the lead up to, and during, the Great Depression , Davis identifies that while some see the story as a "denunciation of capitalism, British-made films showed a traditional telling of the story, while US-made works showed Cratchet in a more central role, escaping the depression caused by European bankers and celebrating what Davis calls "the Christmas of the common man".
By the s he was again set in a world of depression and economic uncertainty. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. For other uses, see A Christmas Carol disambiguation. Adaptations of A Christmas Carol. Dickens was carried away by exuberance, and momentarily forgot good taste". Chesterton wrote of Dickens's religious views that "the tone of Dickens towards religion, though like that of most of his contemporaries, philosophically disturbed and rather historically ignorant, had an element that was very characteristic of himself.
He had all the prejudices of his time. He had, for instance, that dislike of defined dogmas, which really means a preference for unexamined dogmas. It was purchased by J. In Britain the tradition had been to eat roast goose, but a change to turkey followed the publication of the book. By Mrs Beeton , in her Book of Household Management , advised her readers that "A Christmas dinner, with the middle-class of this empire, would scarcely be a Christmas dinner without its turkey. The Man Who Invented Christmas.
The Collected Works of G. Childs, Peter; Tredell, Nicolas Sign In Register Help Cart 0. Christmas Stories By Dickens, Charles. The first time I read [The Chimes], my Father was still alive and I remembered he enjoyed reading it too. Dad liked the character 'Trotty Veck', and who wouldn't? I had bought a centennial edition of Charles Dickens complete works when I was Most people don't realize Dickens wrote other fine Christmas stories besides his famous [A Christmas Carol]. The characters which seemed, 40 years ago a little fantastic in their personalities, don't seem so today when I am approaching 60 years of age.
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The morals that I found uplifting in the pages then are as much or more so today. Log-in or create an account first! Chapman and Hall, An early collection of the five Christmas stories.
Argosy Book Store Published: Red Rover Do Over Published: Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Better World Books Condition: Christmas Stories Charles Dickens Ships with Tracking Number! Buy with confidence, excellent customer service! Christmas Stories Charles Dickens London: Christmas Stories published in the Household Words is for sale.
The front cover is brightly and festively decorated in green and red and bears the title Household Words The Christmas Stories Conducted by Charles Dickens. The covers are in Very Good condition with slight age toning and 2. The pages are in overall Very Good condition. The First Edition Published: May not contain Access Codes or Supplements.