A Christmas Carol

Charles Dickens’s short novel A Christmas Carol was first published in December 1843. It met with immediate critical acclaim, and the first edition sold out within days, inspiring a whole genre of Victorian Christmas books. A Christmas Carol has remained hugely popular ever since, and its main character, Ebenezer Scrooge, has become a byword for miserliness. However, like all good fairy tales, Dickens’s story has a happy ending. Confronted by the ghosts of Christmas past, Christmas present and Christmas yet to come, Scrooge sees the error of his ways, and he is filled with the Christmas spirit of kindness and generosity.


The first edition of A Christmas Carol was illustrated by John Leech, and the book has been a favourite with illustrators ever since. The Manchester artist Alan L. Tabor (1883-1957) created this richly illuminated manuscript of A Christmas Carol, which was published in facsimile by George G. Harrap in 1916. Tabor wrote the entire text by hand and decorated it in the medieval style. His widow donated the manuscript to the John Rylands Library in 1958.


This is an eBookTreasures facsimile edition.


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