'A Christmas Carol, The Companion Edition' Presents the Text Dickens Actually Published, the 1843 First Edition, with All Eight of John Leech's Original Illustrations

"A Christmas Carol, The Companion Edition" Presents the Text Dickens Actually Published, the 1843 First Edition, with All Eight of John Leech's Original Illustrations

Restored by collation against a facsimile of the 1843 printing, with twenty-one readings restored, a Who's Who, four explainers, and forty discussion questions fenced stave by stave

NEW YORK, Oct. 30, 2026, On 19 December 1843, Chapman & Hall published a slim ghost story that its author had written in six weeks of white heat. Charles Dickens had meant to write a pamphlet, stung by a government report on child labour and by the sight of a ragged school, he scrapped the pamphlet and wrote a story instead, published it at his own risk, and watched the first printing of 6,000 copies sell out by Christmas Eve. It was pirated within the month, and it has never been out of print since. A new Companion Classics edition, A Christmas Carol, The Companion Edition, presents the complete story, 28,579 words including Dickens's own Preface, unabridged, in the text of that first edition, taken from Project Gutenberg eBook #46 and checked line by line against a facsimile of the 1843 printing. Twenty-one readings that later texts smoothed away are restored where Dickens put them, down to his own spelling of "chesnuts," and the five staves keep their spelled-out 1843 headings.

The ghost story that invented the modern Christmas is here in the words Dickens actually published: a counting-house miser who counts other people's poverty as their own fault; a dead partner who returns in chains of his own forging to warn him; three Spirits who walk him through the Christmases that made him, the Christmas being kept without him, and the one that may yet come; and a clerk's family whose feast is small and whose house is full. All eight of John Leech's original illustrations are present: the four hand-coloured etchings, including the frontispiece "Mr. Fezziwig's Ball," and the four wood engravings that close their staves.

Around the story, the companion material, all of it original to this edition, includes an introduction telling how the Carol came to be, the scrapped pamphlet, the six-week composition, the publication at Dickens's own risk, the sell-out by Christmas Eve, and the piracy that followed within the month; a Who's Who of some twenty-six entries, from Marley and the three Spirits to Ignorance and Want; four explainers, covering the Victorian Christmas revival (the first commercial Christmas card appeared the same year), the 1834 Poor Law and the workhouses behind "Are there no prisons?", counting-house London, and how the haunting is built; a short life of Charles Dickens; a guide to period money and customs; a reading schedule; and forty discussion questions, spoiler-fenced stave by stave, so a book club can take the Spirits' visits in Dickens's own order.

Alongside the book, the A Christmas Carol, Book Club Kit offers the edition's discussion material as a printable PDF (19 pages, US Letter) for reading groups: a three-meeting reading plan (Dickens's Preface and Staves I-II; Stave III; Staves IV-V), or a one-sitting plan for a group that would rather read it whole in a single festive evening, as Dickens hoped; the edition's Who's Who and its four explainers in full; all forty discussion questions re-arranged into the three meetings so nobody reads a spoiler before its stave; and "Spot the Plate," which prints Leech's four hand-coloured etchings without their captions and challenges readers to find the five hidden details in each, with a full answer key at the back. The kit is available for $7 through the editor's Payhip store: [links pending parent]

A Christmas Carol, The Companion Edition is available now as an eBook ($9.99) through Payhip: [links pending parent], and in The Classics and Companions Shop on the editor's Linktree. Print editions follow on Amazon (paperback, $14.99; hardcover, $24.99). The text and illustrations are public domain worldwide (Charles Dickens died in 1870; John Leech died in 1864); all companion material is original to this edition. This is an independent publication, not affiliated with or endorsed by any Dickens estate, museum, or modern adaptation.

About the editor

Horace Harriott Jr. is a New York-based author and editor of more than two dozen books, including The Side Hustle Handbook, Master Playbook and The Ultimate Commissary Cookbook. This edition is part of his Companion Classics series of reading-together editions of public-domain classics.

About the book

A Christmas Carol, The Companion Edition, Charles Dickens (author), Horace Harriott Jr. (editor). Companion Classics, independently published, October 2026. Text: the first edition (Chapman & Hall, London, 19 December 1843), via Project Gutenberg eBook #46, collated against a facsimile of the 1843 printing; twenty-one readings restored; five staves; 28,579 words including Dickens's Preface; all eight of John Leech's original illustrations; interior proof 126 pages, 6 x 9 in.