A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

Emerging from Dickens's preoccupation in the early 1840s with issues of poverty, ignorance, and cruelty, this classic story of Ebeneezer Scrooge, visited by four ghosts on Christmas Eve, was first published in 1843 to strong reviews and popular success. The Broadview edition uses the first edition with original drawings by John Leech.

This edition also includes Washington Irving's descriptions of English Christmas customs; essays by Dickens on Christmas, and his essay "A Walk in a Workhouse"; a British government report on the lives of child labourers; a speech by Dickens on the importance of educating the poor; selected letters; contemporary reviews; and a listing of film, television, and radio adaptations of the book.

“This volume is a distinguished addition to a superb seriesRichard Kelly’s fine edition of Dickens’s ‘timeless classic’ richly documents just how very timely this little book was, being the inspired and inspiring result of Dickens’s passionately humanitarian response to the harshness and brutality with which the poor, especially children of the poor, were treated in the England of 1843. In his substantial introduction, supplemented by a well-chosen selection of contemporary writings, Professor Kelly also demonstrates another notable aspect of the work’s timeliness by situating it in the context of the great revival of traditional Christmas festivities going on during the first half of the nineteenth century.” — Michael Slater, Birkbeck College, University of London

Charles Dickens (1812-1870) has been remembered in history as one of the greatest authors of the Victorian era. Not only having received tremendous success while he was alive, Charles Dickens' work continues to be read as voraciously as when it was first published. Because of his tremendous popularity, Charles Dickens has secured himself the position of not only being one of the greatest writers of his generation, but one of the most celebrated writers of all time. In addition to his writing, Charles Dickens was a prominent activist, dedicating much of his life to fighting for better social conditions for the poor as well as powerfully advocating for better laws to protect the rights of children. When a piece of literature refers to either unfair working and living conditions, or else portrays the state of a morally corrupt social class, the writing is thus referred to as Dickensian. Much of literary traditions thus owe their inspiration from the writing of Charles Dickens.