The Christmas Books: A Christmas Carol; The Chimes; The Battle of Life; Cricket on the Hearth; The Haunted Man and The Ghost’s Bargain.

CHARLES DICKENS,.

$8,200.00

Item Number: 125019

London: Chapman and Hall, 1843-48.

Complete set of Charles Dickens’ Christmas Books. Octavo, 5 volumes, original cloth with gilt titles and tooling to the spine and front panels, all edges gilt. A Christmas Carol, in Prose. Being a Ghost Story of Christmas is a tenth edition with the half-title printed in blue, title-page printed in red and blue, verso printed in blue, hand-colored etched frontispiece and three hand-colored etched plates by John Leech, four wood-engravings in-text by W.J. Linton after Leech, 2pp. publisher’s advertisements at rear. Second edition of The Chimes: A Goblin Story of Some Bells that Rang an Old Year Out and a New Year with the half-title, engraved frontispiece and pictorial vignette title page. First edition of The Cricket on the Hearth: A Fairy Tale of Home with half-title, frontispiece and vignette title page, second state ad leaf. First edition of the Battle of Life: A Love Story with half-title, advertisements, frontispiece and fourth state vignette title page. First edition of The Haunted Man and The Ghost’s Bargain: A Fancy for Christmas-Time with advertisements, frontispiece and vignette title page. Each volume is in near fine condition. Housed in a custom half morocco clamshell box. A very nice set.

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."