Product Description

(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)

Now joining Everyman’s Library—the most extensive and distinguished collectible library of the world’s greatest works—is an appealing new collection in a small Pocket Classics format, perfect for gift giving and reading pleasure.

Christmas Stories is a treasury of short fiction by great writers of the past two centuries—from Dickens and Tolstoy to John Updike and Alice Munro. As a literary subject, Christmas has inspired everything from intimate domestic dramas to fanciful flights of the imagination, and the full range of its expression is represented in this wonderfully engaging anthology.

Goblins frolic in the graveyard of an early Dickens tale and a love-struck ghost disrupts a country estate in Elizabeth Bowen’s “Green Holly.” The plight of the less fortunate haunts Chekhov’s “Vanka” and Willa Cather’s “The Burglar’s Christmas” but takes a boisterously comic turn in Damon Runyon’s “Dancing Dan’s Christmas” and in John Cheever’s “Christmas Is a Sad Season for the Poor.” From Vladimir Nabokov’s intensely moving story of a father’s grief in “Christmas” to Truman Capote’s hilarious yet heartbreaking “A Christmas Memory,” from Grace Paley’s Jewish girl starring in the Christmas pageant in “The Loudest Voice” to the dysfunctional family ski holiday in Richard Ford’s “Crèche”—each of the stories gathered here is imbued with Christmas spirit (of one kind or another), and all are richly and indelibly entertaining.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #301857 in Books
• Published on: 2007-10-30
• Released on: 2007-10-30
• Format: Deckle Edge
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 400 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780307267177
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.

Review
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About the Author
Diana Secker Tesdell is the editor of the Everyman's Library Pocket Poet Lullabies and Poems for Children.

Customer Reviews

A lovely little book with classic stories
Christmas Stories published by Everyman's Pocket Classic contains short stories that have stood the test of time and become classics in their own right. With twenty stories by authors such as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (yes the Blue Carbuncle is a Christmas story), Charles Dickens (The Story of the Goblins Who Stole a Sexton), Leo Tolstoy (Where Love is, God is), O'Henry (A Chapparal Christmas Gift), Evelyn Waugh (Bella Fleace Gave a Party), or Truman Copote (A Christmas Memory), Christmas Stories is sure to have something for every reader.

Other authors include Nikolai Gogol (The Night Before Christmas), Anthony Trollope (Christmas at Thompson Hall), Anton Chekhov (Vanka), Willa Cather (The Burglar's Christmas), Saki[H. H. Munro](Rginald's Christmas Revel), Vladimir Nabokov (Christmas), Damon Runyon (Dancing Dan's Christmas), Elizabeth Bowen (Green Holly), John Cheever (Christmas is a Sad Season for the Poor), John Updike (The Carol Sing), Muriel Spark (Christmas Fugue), Grace Paley (The Loudest Voice), Alice Munro (The Turkey Season), and finally Richard Ford (Creche).

Comedy, suspense, or a touch of the emotional, it's all here.

If you want a book to carry with you on your holiday travels to fill in quieter momemts, Christmas Stories is the book for you. This would also make a terrific gift for anyone who loves the season. What a wonderful story collection.

Peace

Bah, Humbug!
Every home that celebrates Christmas deserves an anthology of beloved holiday stories that enrich the season. This is not it. Despite the nostalgic cover and the ribbon marker, this rather unpleasant collection lacks most of the familiar and seems to focus on the morbid and depressing. Probably more suited to the jaded and cynical reader, don't buy this one if you are looking for an abridged version of 'A Christmas Carol' to read aloud or 'The Night Before Christmas.' You would do better to buy 'The Kingfisher Book of Christmas Stories' of Michael Hague's Christmas Treasury, or try to buy Tasha Tudor's 'Take Joy' on the secondary market. By all means, save your money and avoid this one. Have a Merry Christmas and, as Tiny Tim observed, 'God Bless us, everyone!'

not all great stories-what a shame
I was going to purchase a second copy for my mother..until I read the last few stories. What a shame Diane Tesdell felt the need to include from Muriel Sparks' to Richard Fords' stories(not in the spirit of Christmas at all;Fords' was a true disappointment). The earlier stories(up to & including Truman Capote's)were wonderful;the rest,mediocre,and even nasty.Everything nowadays just has to meet a low "common" denominator,instead of aspiring to greatness!