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

DICKENS, Charles.

$5,500.00

Item Number: 141364

London: Chapman and Hall/Bradbury & Evans, 1844-48.

Complete set of Charles Dickens’ Christmas Books, comprising the first appearance of A Christmas Carol in red cloth, issued to match the others, and first editions of the remaining four. Octavo, 5 volumes, original cloth with gilt titles and tooling to the spine and front panels, all edges gilt. A Christmas Carol is a tenth edition with 4 hand-colored plates, spine neatly repaired [1844]; First edition of The Chimes: A Goblin Story with the advertisement leaf for the above edition of A Christmas Carol, second state of vignette title-page, recased [1845]; first edition of The Cricket on the Hearth, second state of advertisement leaf [1846]; first edition of The Battle of Life with vignette title-page in fourth state without imprint (Todd’s E1) [1846]; first edition of The Haunted Man and the Ghost’s Bargain with p.161 numeral intact, spine ends repaired [Bradbury & Evans, 1848]. In very good condition. A very nice example.

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."