A Christmas Carol.

DICKENS, Charles. Illustrated by Arthur Rackham.

Item Number: 135852

William Heinemann: London, 1915.

First trade edition of the first Dickens novel illustrated by Arthur Rackham. Octavo, original cloth, pictorial endpapers, illustrated with 12 tipped in color plate with captioned tissue-guards by Arthur Rackham. Very good in the rare original dust jacket which is in very good condition. Bookplate. Rare in the original dust jacket.

A Christmas Carol "may readily be called the Bible of Christmas. It was issued about ten days before Christmas, 1843, and 6000 copies were sold on the first day"(Eckel, 110). "It was a work written at the height of Dickens’ great powers, which would add to his considerable fame, bring a new work to the English language, increase the festivities at Christmastime, and contain his most eloquent protest at the condition of the poor" (John Mortimer). "Suddenly conceived and written within a few weeks, [A Christmas Carol] was the first of Dickens’ Christmas books (a new literary genre thus created incidentally) it was an extraordinary achievement—the one great Christmas myth of modern literature."