A Christmas Carol: And Other Christmas Books

Resumen del libro

No holiday season is complete without Charles Dickens's timeless tale of redemption starring the tightfisted Mr. Scrooge, the long-suffering Bob Cratchit, kindhearted Tiny Tim, and the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future. But A Christmas Carol was only the first and most famous of Dickens's holiday tales. In this edition, everyone's favorite misanthrope appears in company with four more Dickens stories-The Chimes, The Cricket on the Hearth, The Battle of Life, and The Haunted Man-that further develop the Chistmas spirit Dickens did so much to invent.

Charles Dickens (1812-1870) was born in Portsmouth, England, and spent most of his life in London. When he was twelve, his father was sent to debtor's prison and he was forced to work in a boot polish factory to help support the family, an experience that marked him for life. At age fifteen he found work in an attorney's office and later become a reporter. His first stories and sketches were published in 1833, and after his tremendous success with the serialization of The Pickwick Papers in 1836 he turned to writing novels. A passionate advocate of social reform throughout his life, he was the most popular writer of the Victorian era.

Biografía del autor

Charles Dickens (Portsmuth, 1812 Gadshill, 1870) ha llegado hasta nosotros como el autor más importante e influyente de la literatura victoriana. Sus obras y su peripecia personal, íntimamente relacionadas, plasmaron no sólo el pulso social de su época, también el terrible estado moral de una sociedad atrapada en la desigualdad y las convenciones. Dickens experimentó la miseria, el éxito popular, la cárcel, el hambre... sólo logró cumplir con el más íntimo de sus anhelos, la libertad, entregándose a la literatura. Aunque muchas de sus obras gozaron de un extraordinario favor popular, baste decir que muchas de ellas fueron publicadas por entregas, en formato folletín; serían las críticas entusiastas de George Gissing y G. K. Chesterton las que encumbrarían a Dickens como el autor más importante de la literatura inglesa del siglo XIX.