Product Description

In this Christmas classic, Dickens's most famous character, Ebenezer Scrooge, learns the meaning of friendship after being visited by the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Christmas Present, and Christmas Yet to Come. Many don't realize that this 1843 masterpiece is largely responsible for many of the Christmas customs we know today, including feasts, caroling, and family revelry.

With striking illustrations and extended captions unique to The Whole Story, A Christmas Carol provides background information that modern readers could otherwise access only through a broad range of supplemental research--from depictions of daily home life in Victorian England to its examination of the problems of the urban poor at the height of the Industrial Revolution. This distinctive approach places A Christmas Carol, first published in 1843, within the context of its era, bringing it vividly to life.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #847490 in Books
• Published on: 2000-09-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 144 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Lisbeth Zwerger's glorious watercolors for Charles Dicken's A Christmas Carol, first published in 1988, once again prove that she is as adept at creating the terrifying image of Christmas Yet to Come as she is showing the miraculous transformation of Scrooge.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From the Publisher
3 1-hour cassettes

About the Author

Customer Reviews

As It Was Written
This is it! These are the letters, words, sentences, paragraphs that made Christmas the celebration that it is today - the family parties, the feasts, the excitement, giving to the poor. Virtually every way we celebrate this magnificent Holiday (except the mall part!) comes from this book written by Charles Dickens.
First off, this is the unabridged version. Nothing added - nothing taken away. That's as it should be. (Unfortunately, as great as they may be, the movie versions truly do not do the book justice - although I must say the George C. Scott and Alistair Sim versions do come fairly close).
One thing that surprises me about this book is how few people I know that have have actually read it, but they've seen one version or another of the movie countless times! They don't seem to realize that when books are put to film, so much is taken out for length or for other reasons. A Christmas Carol is no different. In fact, if you watch all of the different movie versions available, you STILL would not get the complete book, even though each movie adds one thing or another from the original story that the others may not.
There are countless copies of this story available in various book form, but this particular version is probably one of the best that I have seen. The illustrations attempt in some part to keep in the same spirit as in Dickens' original. But the best, most interesting part of this version (besides the story itself) is all of the little facts, explanations, and trivia put into the margins throughout this book. They give the modern 21st century reader more of an understanding of what 19th century English life was like. A couple of examples: when Dickens writes of the Cratchit family taking their goose to the bakers to be cooked, I wondered why would any one take their food OUT to be cooked and then picked up later. This book explains that few poor people in this time period had ovens large enough to roast a good family sized bird. They were big enough to cook a small bit of meat and that was about it. In order to have one of those rare Holiday meals, they had to take it to the large baker's oven at an appointed time for cooking.
Another fact I did not know was that in the story, Scrooge's sister, Fan, was based on Dickens' actual sister in law, Mary Hogarth.
There are also a multitude of paintings, drawings, and sketches from Dickens' time showing his time. Now you can see, as accurately as one can considering there were no cameras, life of the rich, middle class, and poor as it actually was. There's a picture of Queen Victoria and her family celebrating Christmas. There is also a beautiful painting of a poor labourer's family Christmas celebration. There are sketches from the first edition of 'A Christmas Carol.'
If you plan on owning a copy of this most wonderful of all Christmas novels, this is the version to get.

Greatest Christmas Story
This is the greatest Christmas story. I've read it every year before Christmas since I was in about the third grade-and I've never tired of it! I definitely recomend it, it's a sin to die without reading this classic.

Wonderful edition!
The combination of the unabridged (un-sanitised) version of Dickens' work, thorough background material, and quite delightful illustrations makes this volume a perfect Christmas gift or addition to one's own collection.