'The Christmas Books, Special Christmas Edition' Reunites All Five of Dickens's Christmas Books in Their First-Edition Texts

NEW YORK, NY, Oct. 30, 2026, In December 1843 Charles Dickens published a little book, bound like a gift and issued days before Christmas, and A Christmas Carol sold out by Christmas Eve. It also invented a literary form: the Christmas book. Dickens returned to the form four more times in five years, The Chimes (1844), The Cricket on the Hearth (1845), The Battle of Life (1846), and The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain (1848). A new Companion Classics volume, The Christmas Books, Special Christmas Edition, reunites all five in one book, complete and unabridged, 153,642 words of fiction, in the texts of their first editions.

The Carol is reprinted from this series' own verified Companion Edition of that book, its text collated against a facsimile of the 1843 printing. The other four books were collated in full for this volume against scans of their first editions held by the Internet Archive, and forty-four readings in which the familiar later texts depart from what Dickens first published are restored, each one verified on the page. Two dedications the collected editions dropped are restored with them: the Cricket's inscription to Lord Jeffrey, and the Battle's inscription to the author's English friends in Switzerland. A dozen places where later texts clip the first editions' "Doctor" to "Dr." are disclosed in the edition's notes. The texts are otherwise exactly as first published.

All sixty-four illustrations listed in the first editions, sixty-five plates, are reproduced at their original positions, every one located and restored: the Carol's eight plates by John Leech; thirteen for The Chimes by Daniel Maclise, Leech, Richard Doyle, and Clarkson Stanfield; fourteen for The Cricket on the Hearth, Edwin Landseer among the artists; thirteen for The Battle of Life; and seventeen plates from sixteen listed designs for The Haunted Man, including a double-page plate, and John Tenniel's work on that last book, his first commission for Dickens. A complete census of the illustrations stands at the back of the volume.

The five books are not five copies of the Carol. The Chimes is Dickens's most political Christmas book, a New Year story preached at a ticket-porter who has begun to believe the comfortable doctrine that the poor are poor because they are wicked. The Cricket on the Hearth moves the argument indoors, into a carrier's cottage and a toy-maker's workshop. The Battle of Life has no ghosts at all, it exchanges supernatural machinery for sacrifice, and asks what a renounced love costs the person who renounces it. The Haunted Man closes the series with its darkest proposition: that a man who surrenders the memory of his sorrows will lose his mercies with them. As the edition's introduction puts it: "What the season asked of Dickens, five years running, was a small book that could hold a whole winter: protest and pudding, ghosts and gratitude, a dance at the end."

Around the five books, the companion material, all of it original to this edition, includes an introduction to the five books as a set; an introduction and a Who's Who for each book; four explainers, the Christmas book as a literary form, Dickens and social protest, the goblin and fairy machinery across the five books, and Christmas and New Year; a short life of Dickens; a period note; and 124 discussion questions, the Carol's forty among them, fenced book by book against spoilers. A seasonal reading plan carries the five books across the season at a book a week, beginning the last week of November, saving the Carol for the days before Christmas and The Chimes, the New Year book, for New Year's Eve.

Alongside the book, The Christmas Books, Book Club Kit offers the edition's reading-together material as a printable PDF (39 pages, US Letter) for reading groups: the seasonal reading plan, a Who's Who for every book, the explainers in digest, all 124 discussion questions arranged as five meetings and fenced by part, and a "Spot the Plate" feature built from the first editions' illustrations. The kit is available for $7 through the editor's Payhip store: https://payhip.com/b/HPsqB

The Christmas Books, Special Christmas Edition is available now as an eBook ($9.99) through Payhip: https://payhip.com/b/clIS9, and in The Classics and Companions Shop on the editor's Linktree; the full store is at https://payhip.com/horaceharriottjr. Print editions follow on Amazon (paperback, $24.99; hardcover, $34.99; Kindle, $9.99). The five books and their illustrations are public domain worldwide (Charles Dickens died in 1870), and all companion material is original to this edition. This is an independent publication, not affiliated with any film, stage adaptation, or other edition.

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 Companion Classics

Companion Classics editions print verified first-edition (or otherwise authoritative) texts of public-domain classics, restored by collation against early printings, with the books' original illustrations returned to their places, and surround them with original reading-together apparatus, introductions, Who's Whos, explainers, reading plans, census appendices, and spoiler-fenced discussion questions, with a printable Book Club Kit for every title.

About the book

The Christmas Books, Special Christmas Edition, Charles Dickens (author), Horace Harriott Jr. (editor). Companion Classics, independently published, October 2026. Contents: A Christmas Carol (1843), The Chimes (1844; title page 1845), The Cricket on the Hearth (1845; title page 1846), The Battle of Life (1846), The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain (1848), 153,642 words of fiction (Carol 28,496; The Chimes 30,538; The Cricket on the Hearth 31,438; The Battle of Life 29,459; The Haunted Man 33,711); 64 listed illustrations, 65 plates, all restored; 124 discussion questions; interior proof 548 pages, 6 x 9 in.