A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Classics
brings together all five Christmas books that Charles Dickens wrote between 1843 and 1848. In addition to the title tale—one of Dickenss best-known works and a beloved classic of nineteenth century literature—it includes "The Chimes," "A Cricket on the Hearth," "The Battle of Life," and "The Haunted Man"—stories that Dickens hoped would, as he wrote, "awaken some loving an forebearing thoughts" in his readers. Through these immensely popular tales Dickenss name became synonymous, in the minds of his audience, with the warm tidings of the Christmas season.
This volume also collects "The Story of the Goblins Who Stole a Sexton," an early sketch that was Dickenss model for "A Christmas Carol." And it includes another fifteen stories, three written in collaboration with Wilkie Collins, and all published in the Christmas issues of the two magazines Dickens edited between 1850 and 1870,
Household Words
and
All the Year Round
. These works also celebrate the virtues of home, hearth, and holiday cheer.