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Summary
Summary
A Christmas Carol is the best known and best-loved of Dickens' 'Christmas books', and the story of the miser Scrooge's redemption has become as much a part of the Christmas tradition as plum pudding and carols themselves.
Author Notes
Charles Dickens, perhaps the best British novelist of the Victorian era, was born in Portsmouth, Hampshire, England on February 7, 1812. His happy early childhood was interrupted when his father was sent to debtors' prison, and young Dickens had to go to work in a factory at age twelve. Later, he took jobs as an office boy and journalist before publishing essays and stories in the 1830s.
His first novel, The Pickwick Papers, made him a famous and popular author at the age of twenty-five. Subsequent works were published serially in periodicals and cemented his reputation as a master of colorful characterization, and as a harsh critic of social evils and corrupt institutions. His many books include Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, Bleak House, Great Expectations, Little Dorrit, A Christmas Carol, and A Tale of Two Cities.
Dickens married Catherine Hogarth in 1836, and the couple had nine children before separating in 1858 when he began a long affair with Ellen Ternan, a young actress. Despite the scandal, Dickens remained a public figure, appearing often to read his fiction. He died in 1870, leaving his final novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, unfinished.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (7)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Lisbeth Zwerger's glorious watercolors for Charles Dicken's A Christmas Carol, first published in 1988, once again prove that she is as adept at creating the terrifying image of Christmas Yet to Come as she is showing the miraculous transformation of Scrooge. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Horn Book Review
Historical notes, small color photographs, and illustrations in the margins, along with a few double-page spreads offering more information, supplement the text of Dickens's classic holiday tale about generosity. The additional notes add to the crowded format and are by no means comprehensive, but provide some interesting facts. The watercolor sketches are of average quality. From HORN BOOK Spring 2001, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Booklist Review
Gr. 5 and up, younger for reading aloud. There's a new version of A Christmas Carol on every holiday list, but this one is special. It is Dickens' own performance text, cut and adapted by him for reading aloud in 90 minutes. All the great lines are here (well, almost all), including Scrooge's ever contemporary advice on what to do with the poor ("Are there no prisons?" ). The book's spacious design, with thick paper, clear type, and 21 sepia-tone illustrations done in watercolor and colored pencils, is great for group sharing. The pictures are comic and scary but never overwhelming. They pick up the theatrical, larger-than-life scenarios: the brooding, scowling miser alone at his desk; the ghostly visitors; the Cratchit family ecstatic over Christmas dinner. (Reviewed Sept. 1, 1996)0688136060Hazel Rochman
School Library Journal Review
Gr 4 Up-While there are several versions of the holiday favorite to choose from, those wishing for a solidly classic telling will be more than satisfied with this complete edition. Hans Christian Andersen Award winner Innocenti renders the ink illustration masterfully. Whether the scenes feature a crowded city street; the frightening conversation between Scrooge and the transparent, white-outlined ghost of Marley; or a merry gathering at Fezziwig's warehouse, the detailed, Dickensian atmosphere is perfectly captured. Perspective plays an effective role as well, as when Scrooge's small and solitary head is first seen through the window of his office. The final image also depicts Scrooge through a window, but from the inside looking out into a sunny green field, with Tiny Tim standing close to the man who has become a second father. VERDICT All in all, a handsome, worthy addition to holiday reading traditions.-Joanna Fabicon, Los Angeles Public Library © Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Guardian Review
A Christmas Carol has been described as the most perfect of Dickens's works and as a quintessential heart-warming story, and it is certainly the most popular. It's a ghost story with a moral, a message of hope, good cheer and Christian redemption, and an assertion of the value of the Christmas festival when families get together for feasting, and quarrels are made up. At the end of the tale, a sick child who seemed destined to die is cured, and a bad man turns over a new leaf and becomes generous and affectionate. Good triumphs over evil, good-heartedness and good cheer over poverty and misery. Yet two terrifying children who have been introduced into the story are left at the end, their fates unresolved, to haunt us. It was written in the autumn of 1843, during the hungry 40s, a prolonged period of depression and unemployment. Dickens was busy writing a novel, Martin Chuzzlewit, which was not selling well in serial form. He was also interesting himself in the condition of the country. He visited a ragged school, which offered basic education to street children - children with no parents, or neglectful ones, filthy children who sometimes missed lessons because they had been in prison, pickpockets, prostitutes - and he urged his rich friend Miss Coutts to support such schools. He spoke in support of the Mechanics' Institutes in the great industrial towns, set up to offer male and female workers libraries, lectures and some access to further education. He reacted with horror to the facts revealed in the report of the Children's Employment Commission, and planned "a very cheap pamphlet, called 'An Appeal to the People of England, on behalf of the Poor Man's Child'." The pamphlet was not written - instead he produced A Christmas Carol In it, Scrooge, a London businessman, stands for the rich, and at the start of the story he is approached and asked to make a Christmas donation for the poor suffering in the depression. He refuses rudely, on the grounds that the state provides for them: "Are there no workhouses? Are there no prisons?" And he grumbles that his poor clerk, Bob Cratchit, who has many children, expects a day off for Christmas. Scrooge is then suddenly drawn into a magical world of ghosts and spirits, described with all Dickens's exuberant imagination. John Sutherland has pointed out the many illogicalities of the narrative, but most readers travel happily and unquestioningly through time and space with Scrooge as he revisits his own past and sees the struggles of the Cratchit family and their delicate youngest boy, Tiny Tim. The Spirit of Christmas Past carries Scrooge back to his unhappy boyhood, when his neglectful parents left him at boarding school through the holidays, and at once he is softened: he pities the child he was, says, "Poor boy," weeps, and is already a changed character, ready to love his fellow men. Still, he is taken in hand by further spirits, and given a sharp political lesson by the Spirit of Christmas Present, who produces two children from under his cloak. They are a boy and girl, "meagre, ragged, scowling, wolfish . . . where angels might have sat enthroned, devils lurked". Scrooge asks, "Are they yours?" "'They are Man's,' the Spirit answered. 'This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both . . . but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is doom.'" Scrooge is so troubled by this that he asks, "Have they no refuge or resource?" And the Spirit answers him chillingly with his own words, "Are there no prisons? . . . Are there no workhouses?" To me this is the best moment in A Christmas Carol, as Dickens sends a resounding message to the governing powers of his day (and, we may add, to our times, when one child in six leaves school unable to read fluently). The Spirit disappears and Scrooge's re-education continues. He becomes generous to the Cratchit family, and Tiny Tim, instead of dying as was predicted, recovers. Scrooge laughs and smiles, feels the joy of giving, and celebrates Christmas cheerfully thereafter. Nothing more is heard of the wolfish children. As Dickens devised his story, he "wept, and laughed, and wept again, and excited himself in the most extraordinary manner", walking about the London streets by night. He commissioned coloured illustrations and insisted on his publishers making it a beautiful book, with gilt lettering on the cover. It was greeted with rapturous approval. Lord Jeffrey wrote that Dickens had done more good by it than "all the pulpits and confessionals in Christendom". Thackeray described it in print as "a national benefit, and to every man or woman who reads it a personal kindness". This is how it has been seen ever since. Its message gives comfort and joy. But we still need to think about the wolfish children. Next week John Mullan will be looking at readers' responses. Sponsors of the Guardian's book club - Claire Tomalin Caption: Captions: To order a copy of A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Writings for pounds 8.99 with free UK p&p call Guardian book service on 030 333 6846 It was written in the autumn of 1843, during the hungry 40s, a prolonged period of depression and unemployment. [Dickens] was busy writing a novel, Martin Chuzzlewit, which was not selling well in serial form. He was also interesting himself in the condition of the country. He visited a ragged school, which offered basic education to street children - children with no parents, or neglectful ones, filthy children who sometimes missed lessons because they had been in prison, pickpockets, prostitutes - and he urged his rich friend Miss Coutts to support such schools. He spoke in support of the Mechanics' Institutes in the great industrial towns, set up to offer male and female workers libraries, lectures and some access to further education. He reacted with horror to the facts revealed in the report of the Children's Employment Commission, and planned "a very cheap pamphlet, called 'An Appeal to the People of England, on behalf of the Poor Man's Child'." The pamphlet was not written - instead he produced A Christmas Carol "'They are Man's,' the Spirit answered. 'This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both . . . but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is doom.'" Scrooge is so troubled by this that he asks, "Have they no refuge or resource?" And the Spirit answers him chillingly with his own words, "Are there no prisons? . . . Are there no workhouses?" To me this is the best moment in A Christmas Carol, as Dickens sends a resounding message to the governing powers of his day (and, we may add, to our times, when one child in six leaves school unable to read fluently). - Claire Tomalin
Kirkus Review
This simplified version of the classic is a straightforward piece of work, sticking to the grand elements of the storyline: The miserly Scrooge gets his Christmas eve comeuppance from Marley and the three ghosts, sees the folly of his parsimonious ways, and becomes a changed man. Great hunks of the original have been left on the cutting room floor, naturally enough, but what is left feels too much like a pastiche: scenic views without the travel in between. Heyer's crisp acrylics are accomplished and often stunning, though there are odd moments when the artwork isn't in step with the text (why aren't Marley's glasses up on his ghostly forehead?) and other times when it simply fails to convey the story's spirit, such as the dance scene with the Ghost of Christmas Past. This retelling will be most successful if it spurs readers on to the original. (Picture book. 4-8)
Library Journal Review
This production offers a different take on Dickens's 1843 ghost story by featuring one woman as the narrator and the entire cast-considering the story's brevity, there's a fair number of characters and voices, ranging from that "tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge," on down to Tiny Tim and others. British actress Miriam Margolyes presents the story through a straight narration of the author's sublime poetic prose but puts more of an animated spin on his equally superb dialog. VERDICT Traditionalists may prefer a male rendition since nearly all the characters are men, but Margolyes does the yuletide standard justice, and a female voice may prove more accessible to girls who are being introduced to the story. Buy accordingly.-Mike Rogers, Library Journal (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Excerpts
Excerpts
A Christmas Carol is the best known and best-loved of Dickens' 'Christmas books', and the story of the miser Scrooge's redemption has become as much a part of the Christmas tradition as plum pudding and carols themselves.Will Tiny Tim live to see another Christmas? Can Scrooge recover his humanity and learn to love the fellow men he seems to despise? Dickens will make you laugh and make you cry as you follow Scrooge's supernatural adventures on Christmas Eve? Excerpted from A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
