Dickens's Christmas Books - complete online versions

The Christmas Carol, The Chimes, Cricket On the Hearth, Battle Of Life
& The Haunted Man & the Ghosts's Bargain with Illustrations.

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	xii                                       INTRODUCTION. had just occurred to me) that I never left home before the owls went out, and led quite a solitary life." Just before Christmas, 1843, the little book, bearing date 1843,1 was published by Messrs. Chapman and Hall, on com­mission for the author, in one volume foolscap octavo of one hundred and sixty-six pages, with four coloured illustrations and four woodcuts by John Leech, at five shillings. It was described on the title-page as "A Christmas Carol, in prose, being a ghost story of Christmas," and the preface, which was dated December, 1843, ran as follows :— I have endeavoured in this Ghostly little book, to raise the Ghost of an Idea, which shall not put my readers out of humour with themselves, with each other, with the season, or with me. May it haunt their houses pleasantly, and no one wish to lay it. Their faithful Friend and Servant, C. D. December, 1843. There was no question as to the success of the book. "A most prodigious success—the greatest, I think, I have ever achieved," Charles Dickens wrote to Macready ; while in the letter to Professor Felton which has already been quoted he said : " Its success is most prodigious. And by every post all manner of strangers write all manner of letters to him "—the author—" about their homes and hearths, and how this same Carol is read aloud there, and kept on a little shelf by itself." The first edition of six thousand was cleared off immediately, the second and third editions were very rapidly disposed of, and by the end of 1844 fifteen thousand copies had been sold. As to the view which was taken of it by the most competent among the critics it will be enough to quote the following extract from a letter addressed to Charles Dickens by Lord Jeffrey : " You should be happy yourself, for you may be sure you have done more good by this little publica­tion, fostered more kindly feelings, and prompted more positive acts of beneficence, than can be traced to all the pulpits and confessionals in Christendom since Christmas, 1842 ;" and the noble and generous tribute which was paid to the book and its author by William Makepeace Thackeray (over the signature 1 Mr. James Cook's Bibliography of Charles Dickens says that the Carol was dated 1844, but tins is a mistake.