Inside the illustrated edition
An evening unlike any other
A pale visitor emerges from the shadows. Five paintings follow the changing light of Dickens’s Christmas story.
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The pleasure of good company
Music, movement and a room full of warmth. Fezziwig’s dance becomes a celebration of shared delight.
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The warmth that matters
A family gathers close to the hearth. The painting finds abundance in affection and attention.
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When the world falls quiet
Weeds and weathered stones lie beneath a pale sky. A colder palette gives silence its weight.
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Morning, seen afresh
The window opens onto clear light. A joyful painting of seeing the familiar world differently.
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Distinctive voices, expressive narration and words that light up as you listen. Move between reading and listening in the Read Classics app, at your own pace.
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The opening is yours.
The title announcement, introduction and everything through the end of the first stave, including any intervening preface or dedication, are included free.
The complete ebook is free in our launch collection. Audio beyond the opening is a separate purchase.
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A cold London night. A visitor at the door.
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.
Discover the edition
With an original introduction, chronology and further reading. 5 paintings accompany the story.
Read the complete ebook in the Read Classics app, for Android now and for iPhone soon. The free audio opening is separate from ebook access. This website offers an excerpt from the introduction, not an interactive browser reader.
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.
An unexpected visitor
His body was transparent
Stave 1 · Painting 1 of 5
Fezziwig’s dance
Then old Fezziwig stood out to dance with Mrs. Fezziwig.
Stave 2 · Painting 2 of 5
A circle of warmth
all the Cratchit family drew round the hearth
Stave 3 · Painting 3 of 5
The silence of the stones
overrun by grass and weeds
Stave 4 · Painting 4 of 5
A different morning
Golden sunlight; Heavenly sky
Stave 5 · Painting 5 of 5
A Christmas Carol
Pinch or use the zoom controls to look closer. Swipe between paintings.