A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Books: Introduction by Margaret Atwood

The final volume in the Everyman’s Library Charles Dickens collection: the timeless story of everyone’s favorite misanthrope, Ebenezer Scrooge, together with four more of Dickens’s Christmas tales and with Arthur Rackham’s classic illustrations. No holiday season is complete without the story of tightfisted Mr. Scrooge, of his long-suffering and mild-mannered clerk, Bob Cratchit, of Bob’s kindhearted lame son, Tiny Tim, and of the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future. First published in 1843, A Christmas Carol was republished in 1852 in a new edition with four other Christmas stories—The Chimes, The Cricket on the Hearth, The Battle of Life, and The Haunted Man. These beloved tales revived the notion of the Christmas “spirit”—and have kept it alive ever since.