CHRISTMAS BOOKS (comprised of A CHRISTMAS CAROL; THE CHIMES; THE BATTLE OF LIFE; THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH; and THE HAUNTED MAN AND THE GHOSTS BARGAIN] [And] AMERICAN NOTES FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION

London: Chapman & Hall, 1852 and 1855. THE FIRST AUTHORIZED COLLECTED EDITION of the five famous holiday novels. It features a new preface by Dickens as well. Bound with the 1855 edition of AMERICAN NOTES. AMERICAN NOTES with a frontispiece reproduced from the first edition. CHRISTMAS BOOKS with a frontispiece reproducing John Leech's famous illustration of the dancing Fezziwigs. 8vo, in a handsome contemporary binding of three-quarter pebbled dark green morocco over marbled boards, the spine with gilt-tooled raised bands forming six gilt framed and decorated compartments, four with central gilt floral tools, two others gilt lettered and ruled, marbled endpapers, flies, and page edges. xiii, 175, [vii], 1-266 pp. A very handsome and well preserved copy of these Dickens classics, rare in contemporary binding. THE SCARCE FIRST AUTHORIZED COLLECTED AND SINGLE VOLUME EDITION OF THE GREAT CHRISTMAS BOOKS OF CHARLES DICKENS COMBINED WITH AMERICAN NOTES. The text includes ‘A Christmas Carol’, ‘The Chimes’, ‘The Cricket on the Hearth’, ‘The Battle of Life’, and ‘The Haunted Man’.
A CHRISTMAS CAROL IS ONE OF THE GREATEST BOOKS IN ALL OF LITERATURE. With its publication, Dickens captured the popular imagination as no other novelist had done, he was held in in high critical esteem by contemporaries as varied as Queen Victoria and Dostoevsky. He called his extremely popular 'Christmas Carol' a “whimsical sort of masque intended to awaken loving and forbearing thoughts.” The lasting appeal of this novel has proven it to be much more. It had been dramatized on the London stage within a month of its publication and has been made into no less then 17 motion pictures.
John Leech illustrated Dickens’ classic “Christmas Carol” with four etched plates and several woodcuts within the text.
Leech was a favored illustrator of Dickens and would later produce art for all of Dickens' Christmas books and several other titles as well.
THE CHIMES was Dickens’ second installment in the “Christmas Books” series and his labors in creating THE CHIMES were “very arduous” in order to make it a worthy successor to A CHRISTMAS CAROL. He wrote to one of his friends that he believed he had “written a tremendous book and knocked the ‘Carol’ out of the field. It will make a great uproar I have no doubt.”
THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH was third in Dickens’ Christmas Book Series. The title grew out of Dickens’ idea to begin a weekly periodical named “The Cricket” with an added motto, “A cheerful creature that chirrups on the hearth.” Dickens relinquished that idea to instead concentrate on the venture that resulted in the founding of the “The Daily News.” The original periodical idea manifested itself in his “Household Words.” 'THE CRICKET' was extremely popular when issued. Within one year there had been twenty two editions printed.
THE BATTLE OF LIFE was the fourth installment in Dickens’ series of Christmas Books. Dickens managed to find the time to complete the manuscript while working on DOMBEY AND SON in Switzerland and in December of 1846 the book was released, selling 23,000 copies in the first 24 hours.
THE HAUNTED MAN AND THE GHOST'S BARGAIN was the last of Dickens' popular Christmas books and one that returns to the themes that brought him such success with A CHRISTMAS CAROL--misery and wrongdoing, realization, redemption and peace as a man blighted by sorrow discovers the true value of his life and of those around him. Like the other four books, it was enormously popular from its first printing and which was followed by countless editions through the years.
AMERICAN NOTES is his famous travel account noted for its highly incisive criticism of American customs. Dickens toured New England by way of Boston, Worcester, New Haven, New York, and Philadelphia, visiting prisons and state hospitals along the way. "Dickens' tour included a fortnight in Baltimore, Washington, and Richmond. Some of his experiences and an entertaining account of his trip by stage to Fredericksburg, Va., are recounted. His chapter on slavery was influential, for it stirred the hatred of British liberals against slavery, and it was a source of inspiration for Longfellow's Poems on Slavery. But most of Dickens' views were lifted from Theodore D. Weld's work American Slavery As It Is (1839)." - Clark III-151.