A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Writings (Penguin Clothbound Classics)

xxix, 265, [1]; 366 pp. Edited, with introduction and notes, by Michael Slater. Chronology and suggestions for further reading precede text, three appendices follow text. Includes: Christmas Festivities; The Story of the Goblins Who Stole a Sexton; A Christmas Episode from Master Humphrey's Clock; A Christmas Carol; The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain; A Christmas Tree; What Christmas Is, As We Grow Older; The Seven Poor Travellers; Dickens's Prefaces to Collected Editions of The Christmas Books; Dickens's Descriptive Headlines for A Christmas Carol and The Haunted Man; Dickens and The Arabian Nights. Part of Penguin's beautiful hardback Clothbound Classics series, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith, these delectable and collectible editions are bound in high-quality colourful, tactile cloth with foil stamped into the design. After reading Christmas Carol, the notoriously reculsive Thomas Carlyle was "seized with a perfect convulsion of hospitality" and threw not one but two Christmas dinner parties. The impact of the story may not always have been so dramatic but, along with Dickens other Christmas writings, it has had a lasting and significant influence upon our ideas about the Christmas spirit, and about the season as a time for celebration, charity, and memory.