CHRISTMAS CAROL & OTHER CHRISTMAS WRITINGS -Penguin Classics

In October 1843, Dickens hit upon the idea of writing a story that would not only celebrate Christmas but alert people to the desperate needs of English's poor. The Christmas Carol was the result. With the character of Scrooge ('I don't make merry myself at Christmas, and I can't afford to make idle people merry') Dickens gives us one of his most delightful grotesques, in a story that is a perfect blend of comedy and horror, and which continues to haunt our houses at Christmas time. The Chimes, his second Christmas book, is a topical satire set on New Year's Eve. Written by a Dickens 'wrathful and red-hot' at the attitudes of the comfortably rich, it holds some of the concentrated power of Hard Times and it created, as he had hoped, 'a great uproar.' A second volume of Christmas books, containing The Cricket on the Health, The Battle of Life and The Haunted Man, is also published in Penguin Classics.