This luxurious, large-format gift edition presents Charles Dickens' best-loved Christmas stories, featuring gold cover embossing and stunning, illustrated page edges.
A time of charity and choir, cosy gatherings around the fire, time spent with friends and family, and snow on the ground. All of these festive traditions along with many others were cemented in the public conscience by Charles Dickens' Christmas stories.
This collection contains five of Dickens' best-loved Christmas The Cricket on the Hearth, The Battle of Life, The Haunted Man, The Chimes, and the best-known and most-treasured of all, A Christmas Carol. Join Tiny Tim, the Crotchet family, Ebenezer Scrooge, and a menagerie of wonderfully realised characters on this festive journey and remind yourself of the true meaning of Christmas.
Part of the Arcturus Epic Classics series, this edition also features over 40 classic illustrations by John Leech, John Tenniel and others, as well as a a detailed introduction to Dickens' life and Christmas stories, written by George Davidson.
ABOUT THE Arcturus Epic Classics brings together stunning hardback gift editions of classic works, presented with striking illustrated page edges and illustrated throughout by such greats as Gustave Doré and Harry Clarke.
Charles John Huffam Dickens (1812-1870) was a writer and social critic who created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era. His works enjoyed unprecedented popularity during his lifetime, and by the twentieth century critics and scholars had recognised him as a literary genius. His novels and short stories enjoy lasting popularity.
Dickens left school to work in a factory when his father was incarcerated in a debtors' prison. Despite his lack of formal education, he edited a weekly journal for 20 years, wrote 15 novels, five novellas, hundreds of short stories and non-fiction articles, lectured and performed extensively, was an indefatigable letter writer, and campaigned vigorously for children's rights, education, and other social reforms.
Dickens was regarded as the literary colossus of his age. His 1843 novella, A Christmas Carol, remains popular and continues to inspire adaptations in every artistic genre. Oliver Twist and Great Expectations are also frequently adapted, and, like many of his novels, evoke images of early Victorian London. His 1859 novel, A Tale of Two Cities, set in London and Paris, is his best-known work of historical fiction. Dickens's creative genius has been praised by fellow writers—from Leo Tolstoy to George Orwell and G. K. Chesterton—for its realism, comedy, prose style, unique characterisations, and social criticism. On the other hand, Oscar Wilde, Henry James, and Virginia Woolf complained of a lack of psychological depth, loose writing, and a vein of saccharine sentimentalism. The term Dickensian is used to describe something that is reminiscent of Dickens and his writings, such as poor social conditions or comically repulsive characters.
On 8 June 1870, Dickens suffered another stroke at his home after a full day's work on Edwin Drood. He never regained consciousness, and the next day he died at Gad's Hill Place. Contrary to his wish to be buried at Rochester Cathedral "in an inexpensive, unostentatious, and strictly private manner," he was laid to rest in the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey. A printed epitaph circulated at the time of the funeral reads: "To the Memory of Charles Dickens (England's most popular author) who died at his residence, Higham, near Rochester, Kent, 9 June 1870, aged 58 years. He was a sympathiser with the poor, the suffering, and the oppressed; and by his death, one of England's greatest writers is lost to the world." His last words were: "On the ground", in response to his sister-in-law Georgina's request that he lie down.
All of these are good but none of them stand up really to A Christmas Carol, which is also included in this book. The other 4 stories are similar but definitely different. Dickens for me personally is just a hard read due to the language at the time. I find them somewhat difficult to follow and have to go back several times. Still great though