Charles Dickens

A Christmas Carol in Prose

“A national benefit and to every man or woman who reads it, a personal kindness.” --William Makepeace Thackeray The Western world typically thinks of Christmas as having a singular origin, away in a manger, but when you look at how the holiday is celebrated today, it’s hard to see a more powerful progenitor than Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol. First published on December 17, 1843 as a novella, the story bestowed on Christmas its rich and complicated social character. Ebenezer’s epic Christmas Eve illustrates both the joy to be found in friends, family, and festive gatherings... and the dangers of letting such happiness and privilege blind you to the lives of the less fortunate. The story is a product of its time, a response to the ills of Victorian-era industrialization and the desire for tradition, but you only need to look at how varied the adaptations of A Christmas Carol have become--on stage, in film, and in song--to know that it is truly timeless. This exclusive edition of A Christmas Carol in Prose: Being a Ghost Story of Christmas is one adaptation not to miss. It is a scanned volume of the original novella--complete with original spooky title--enhanced with new illustrations and narration by artist and musician Jon Langford. Here Langford imagines the story as a stage production put on by a small West Yorkshire theater in 1916. Download it for free to see--and hear--each of the four ghosts as an early 20th century audience might have.
Christmas stories / Christmas / Children's Literature