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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	INTRODUCTION.                                    xix
	tion, at Mr. Forster's rooms in Lincoln's Inn Fields; and this, the precursor of so many subsequent readings, duly came off in the presence of John Forster, Laman Blanchard, Douglas Jerrold, Carlyle, Maclise, Frederick Dickens, W. J. Fox (of Oldham), Stanfield, Dyce, and the Rev. W. Harness, whose portraits—marvellous likenesses all of them—were preserved in a pencil drawing which Maclise made in commemoration of the event. Mr. Forster gives Monday the 2d of December, 1844, as the date of this reading, but there would seem to be some mistake in this, as a letter from Charles Dickens to his wife, dated "Monday the 2d of December, 1844," says "the reading comes off to-morrow night," and " I dine at Gore House to-day." The book, a foolscap octavo volume of one hundred and seventy-five pages, was published by Messrs. Chapman and Hall, at five shillings, shortly before Christmas, 1844, but bore the date 1845. It was described on the title-page as "A Goblin Story of some Bells that rang an Old Year out and a New Year in," and was embellished with an engraved frontispiece and title-page by D. Maclise, R.A.— "Mac's frontispiece is charming," Charles Dickens wrote to his wife—and with eleven woodcuts by Clarkson Stanfield, R.A., John Leech, and Richard Doyle. Mr. John F. Dexter's Dickens Memento (Field and Tuer, 1855) says, "The frontis­piece and vignette title were engraved by F. P. Becker after drawings by Maclise, and there are two states of the plate. The first has the name of Chapman and Hall etched in the clouds at the bottom of the illustration; the second also has the publisher's name engraved under the names of the designer and engraver. The first edition has got to be very scarce, and with the first state of the frontispiece is now worth about £2." Since this was written the value of the book has considerably increased. There was no preface to the Chimes and no dedication. Mr. Forster says that the book was dedicated to Lord Jeffrey, but this is an error. It was, in fact, the Cricket on the Hearth which was so dedicated. There was no money disappointment with the Chimes as there had been with the Carol, for the sales of the second Christmas book doubled those of the first almost immediately, but the Chimes never became in the long run so popular as its