O Christmas Three
O. Henry, Tolstoy, and Dickens
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- £7.99
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- £7.99
Publisher Description
Four classic tales from three famous authors to enliven and inspire your celebration of Christmas this season…
This beautiful gift book contains three heart-warming stories that recall Christmases past:
• O.Henry's all-American tale, "The Gift of the Magi," originally published in 1906.
• Leo Tolstoy's Russian folktale, "Where Love Is, There God Is Also" from 1887.
• Charles Dickens' little known classic, "The Seven Poor Travellers" and "What Christmas Is As We Grow Older," 1851.
"One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And sixty cents of it was in pennies. Pennies saved one and two at a time by bulldozing the grocer and the vegetable man and the butcher until one's cheeks burned with the silent imputation of parsimony that such close dealing implied. Three times Della counted it. One dollar and eighty-seven cents. And the next day would be Christmas…. She had been saving every penny she could for months, with this result. Twenty dollars a week doesn't go far. Expenses had been greater than she had calculated. They always are. Only $1.87 to buy a present for Jim. Her Jim." – from the beginning of "The Gift of the Magi"
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Perhaps best described as Dickens's ``other'' Christmas story, this is an elderly narrator's reminiscence of holidays past, each incident inspired by the gifts and toys that decorate the traditional tree. There is a range of appeal in the story itself, from snug memories of beloved toys to the passing along of eerie stories surrounding various childhood haunts. Ingpen renders the story quite accessible by focusing on objects of the period mentioned in the text, and by filtering the memory aspects of the telling through soft sweeps of paint. All ages.
