Vintage Hardcover Christmas Books: A Christmas Carol, The Chimes, The Cricket on the Hearth, The Battle of Life, The Haunted Man by Charles Dickens, 1913 with Inscription

Vintage Hardcover Christmas Books: A Christmas Carol, The Chimes, The Cricket on the Hearth, The Battle of Life, The Haunted Man by Charles Dickens. This copy is in good condition with a burgundy cover embossed with gold. Printed in 1913. This copy bears the handwritten inscription by the original owner and indicates it was a Christmas gift in 1925.

After the success attained with A Christmas Carol in 1843 Charles Dickens continued the series throughout the 1840s, maintaining what he called "the Carol philosophy" to "strike a sledgehammer blow" for the poor, uneducated, and repressed. In typical Dickens fashion he drove his message home with a mixture of humor and good cheer. Margaret Lane points out in her introduction to the Oxford Illustrated Dickens-Christmas Stories "when he had a pill to offer he confected it expertly with spice and sugar."

Although subsequent Christmas books sold well at the time of their initial release, they have not enjoyed the staying power of A Christmas Carol.

The Christmas books, particularly The Chimes, the Cricket, and the Carol, were the centerpiece of Dickens' public reading tours in the 1850s and 60s with A Christmas Carol far and away the most popular with audiences.

Dickens discontinued the Christmas books after The Haunted Man, devoting his "spare" time to the publication of weekly magazines, Household Words (1850-1858) and All the Year Round (1859-1867), in which he included annual Christmas stories. These Christmas stories, together with the Christmas books, forever linked Dickens with the celebration of Christmas.