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.

$2,000.00

Item Number: 145260

London: Chapman and Hall, 1886.

Finely bound example of Dickens’ Christmas books, reprinted from the stereotype plates of the original. Octodecimo, five volumes bound in three quarter morocco over marbled boards by Riviere & Son with gilt titles to the spine in six compartments within raised bands, marbled endpapers, top edge gilt, tissue-guarded frontispiece to each volume, additional illustrated title page to each volume with the exception of A Christmas Carol, engraved illustrations by John Leech, D. Maclise, R. Doyle, and C. Stanfield. In very good condition with rubbing to the exterior hinges and extremities, abrasions and darkening to the spines, some splitting to the exterior hinge of The Cricket on the Hearth. A charming collection.

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."