Christmas Stories. by DICKENS, Charles - 1851-62: From Household Words and All The Year Around.

[London:] [printed by Bradbury & Evans,], 1851-62. Octavo (234 x 156 mm). Contemporary green half calf, titles and delicate floral design to spine in gilt in compartments with raised bands, marbled sides, endpapers and edges. Engraving to p. 5 of A Message from the Sea. Bookplates of Jeffrey Stern and Virginian bibliophile Christopher Clark Geest to front pastedown, Stern's ownership inscription to first blank. A little rubbing to extremities, touch of wear to tips, a couple of scuffs to leather; a very good copy indeed. An attractive collection of nine of Dickens's Christmas Stories, bound from the original parts, consisting of What Christmas Is (1851), The Poor Relation's Story (1852), The Schoolboy's Story (1853), The Seven Poor Travellers (1854), The Holly-Tree Inn (1855), A House to Let (1858), The Haunted House (1859), A Message from the Sea (1860), and Somebody's Luggage (1862). Dickens edited Household Words and All the Year Round between 1850 and 1859, and 1859 and 1895 respectively. While there he organised these seasonal offerings analogous to his five Christmas Books by writing "in company"; composing the opening and closing pieces as a frame for stories supplied by his staff writers, the majority of whom were women. The formula that Dickens pursued from 1852 to 1866 involved gathering together a group of disparate individuals who would while away a Christmas Eve by recounting various stories in the manner of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.