The Christmas Books: v. 1 - Softcover

A Christmas classic for more than 150 years, "A Christmas Carol" tells the story of the cantankerous Ebenezer Scrooge, his underpaid clerk Bob Cratchit, and Bob's frail son Tiny Tim, one of Dickens' most enduring and popular characters. When Scrooge, a miserly money-changer, is visited by the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future on one cold and snowy Christmas evening, all three of their lives change for ever...

Charles Dickens was born in Landport in Portsmouth on 7 February 1812. Sent to work in a blacking factory at the age of twelve, after his Navy Pay Office clerk father was imprisoned for debt, Dickens's memories of this unhappy period haunted him throughout his life and influenced much of his writing. After stints as a clerk and a shorthand reporter in the law courts, Dickens became a reporter of parliamentary debates for the Morning Chronicle until the huge success of his first books enabled him to become a full-time author. Charles Dickens died on 9 June 1870, leaving his last novel The Mystery of Edwin Drood unfinished. Peter Ackroyd's biography of Charles Dickens was published in 1990 to enormous critical acclaim. He has also written another major biography, T.S. Eliot, which was awarded the 1984 Whitbread Prize and was joint winner of the Royal Society of Literature's William Heinemann Award. Peter Ackroyd's novels include The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde, Milton in America, Chatterton, The Clerkenwell Tales and The Fall of Troy and his non-fiction works include Ezra Pound and his World, Chaucer and London: The Biography, among others. His most recent biography is Poe: A Life Cut Short.