A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Classics
by Charles Dickens
Release Date: December 8, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-955690-35-5
Charles Dickens overcame much hardship to become the greatest writer of his age. His life story embodies the harsh realities and enduring hope of 19th-century London. He was the eighth child born to a family whose lavish living soon outpaced their income.
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About the Author
Mary Shelley is an English novelist whose work has reached all corners of the globe. Author of Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus (1818), Shelley was the daughter of the radical philosopher William Godwin, who described her as ‘singularly bold, somewhat imperious, and active of mind’. Her mother, who died days after her birth, was the famous defender of women’s rights, Mary Wollstonecraft. Mary grew up with five semi-related siblings in Godwin’s unconventional but intellectually electric household.
At the age of 16, Mary eloped to Italy with the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, who praised ‘the irresistible wildness & sublimity of her feelings’. Each encouraged the other’s writing, and they married in 1816 after the suicide of Shelley’s wife. They had several children, of whom only one survived.
A ghost-writing contest on a stormy June night in 1816 inspired Frankenstein, often called the first true work of science-fiction. Superficially a Gothic novel, influenced by the experiments of Luigi Galvani, it was concerned with the destructive nature of power when allied to wealth.
After Percy Shelley’s death in 1822, she returned to London and pursued a very successful writing career as a novelist, biographer and travel writer. She also edited and promoted her husband’s poems and other writings.
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Charles Dickens overcame much hardship to become the greatest writer of his age. His life story embodies the harsh realities and enduring hope of 19th-century London. He was the eighth child born to a family whose lavish living soon outpaced their income. Eventually, Charles' father was imprisoned for his debts and the twelve-year-old boy was forced to work at a shoe blackening factory. Young Dickens quickly fell into poverty, and this dark experience, along with feelings of abandonment, deeply impacted his societal views, and therefore his writings. Largely self-educated, Dickens became a prolific writer of fifteen novels, five novellas, and regular contributions to several journals. The unexpected popularity of A Christmas Carol—which has never gone out of print—tied him irrevocably to the Christmas season and elevated the holiday to the phenomenon we know today. Readers around the world have been profoundly moved by his story; the mixture of memorable imagery, unequivocal truth, and seasonal charity brings heart-warming cheer to readers young and old. Each of Dickens' festive stories inspires warmth and generosity, reminding us to cherish and encourage peace and goodwill to all.
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