The English collection
A Christmas Carol
The novella
On Christmas Eve, Ebenezer Scrooge would rather be left to his accounts. Dickens brings humour, supernatural unease and close attention to everyday lives to a story about the distances we put between ourselves and others.
A way into the book
From the introduction
On Christmas Eve, Ebenezer Scrooge wants the world to leave him to his accounts. Outside his London counting-house, cold weather, festive preparations and people asking for help press upon the boundaries he has drawn around his life. A Christmas Carol begins by insisting that his former business partner, Jacob Marley, is dead. The insistence is both a joke shared with the reader and a warning that ordinary explanations may soon prove inadequate. Dickens’s short book moves between comedy, domestic observation and supernatural fear. Its familiar characters are worth meeting on the page, where an unexpectedly playful narrator keeps interrupting any solemn account of what we ought to learn.
An excerpt from the original Read Classics introduction. The Android preview contains the complete introduction and Stave I.
Inside the illustrated edition
The art of the story · A Christmas Carol
An evening unlike any other
A pale visitor emerges from the shadows. Five paintings follow the changing light of Dickens’s Christmas story.
His body was transparent
The art of the story · A Christmas Carol
The pleasure of good company
Music, movement and a room full of warmth. Fezziwig’s dance becomes a celebration of shared delight.
Then old Fezziwig stood out to dance with Mrs. Fezziwig.
The art of the story · A Christmas Carol
The warmth that matters
A family gathers close to the hearth. The painting finds abundance in affection and attention.
all the Cratchit family drew round the hearth
The art of the story · A Christmas Carol
When the world falls quiet
Weeds and weathered stones lie beneath a pale sky. A colder palette gives silence its weight.
overrun by grass and weeds
The art of the story · A Christmas Carol
Morning, seen afresh
The window opens onto clear light. A joyful painting of seeing the familiar world differently.
Golden sunlight; Heavenly sky
In development
The Android preview
Introduction + Stave I · No account needed.
The Android app lets you try the typography and read the preview offline. It is not yet available for public download.
For now, you can read the introduction excerpt above. This website does not yet offer the reading sample or an interactive reader.
Explore the reading experience