Without question, The Annotated Christmas Carol is the most authoritative and entertaining editions of Dickens’ classic ever produced. Other images in this book include rare photographs, drawings, engravings, lithographs and other illustrations relating to Dickens and his Christmas story, and complement the engaging notes, which cover all the literary, historical and autobiographical aspects of the story. Leech’s illustrations are supplemented by other contemporary pictures by George Cruikshand, Robert Seymour, Gustave Dore, John Tenniel, Sol Eytinge Jr. Also included are all the original illustrations by John Leech, his lively wood engravings and beautiful four-color reproductions of the original hand-colored etchings. The Annotated Christmas Carol is the first edition to combine the original story with Dickens’ Public Reading text, published to coincide with his 1867-68 American tour, which has not been available in nearly a century. By the time of Dickens’ death in 1870, his Christmas tale had already secured so sure a place in the mythology of the holiday that a story circulated about a little costermonger’s girl in Drury Lan who, on hearing the sad news, asked, “Dickens dead? Then will Father Christmas die too?” As Hearn points out, few modern readers realize that A Christmas Carol was written during a decline of old Christmas traditions, and Dickens’ book, in fact, helped revive the holiday. As Hearn notes, “Should all of Charles Dickens’ marvelous creations from The Pickwick Papers to The Mystery of Edwin Drood be suddenly threatened with extinction, the story of Ebenezer Scrooge would surely survive.” for it has become a part of Christmas folklore. Hearn’s illuminating introduction tells “the story behind the story” of Dickens’ classic work- how he wrote A Christmas Carol at a feverish pace in just six weeks, how he hired the illustrator John Leech and published the book at his own expense with disastrous results, and how the public immediately embraced this “ghost story of Christmas” in both England and the United States. This latest contribution to the popular Norton Anthology Series delves into the engrossing history of the book’s evolution and its initial publication just in time for Christmas 1843.
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