Used
Hardcover
2008
$65.21
The Christmas Books by Charles Dickens became an annual event following the enormous popular impact of the first story, A Christmas Carol - and so influential that they are credited with inventing the idea of Christmas itself. This beautiful edition is part of a new series offering the best-loved classics in fine volumes, with colourful cloth bindings, and produced to the highest standards, for under GBP20. Instead of a dust jacket, the decorated cloth covers have a printed illustration wrapping around the book.Among the other elements that differ from standard hardbacks are coloured page tops, decorated endpapers, meticulous line-by-line typesetting, and thicker acid free paper, to give these editions extra appeal and embody the crafted virtues of a good book. The result is quality of design and production that adds to the pleasure of reading. For anyone interested in a fine edition of a favourite work, an attractive volume for the bookshelf or an authentic and distinctive present.
New
Paperback
1995
$7.05
With illustrations by Edward Landseer, Daniel Maclise, Clarkson Stanfield, Frank Stone, Richard Doyle, John Leech and John Tenniel, and with a new Introduction by Cedric Watts, Research Professor of English, University of Sussex. In these five long stories, written specifically for Christmas, Dickens combines his concern for social ills with the myths and memories of childhood and traditional seasonal lore. A Christmas Carol, the first of the selection, has become a touchstone of English festive fiction and an enduring favourite internationally. Repeatedly adapted, parodied, staged and filmed, this richly influential tale is powerfully vivid and moving. The other stories, The Chimes, The Cricket on the Hearth, The Battle of Life and The Haunted Man, blend whimsy, sentiment, comedy, satire, the didactic and the fantastic, developing resourcefully the theme of individual and social regeneration.