A Christmas Carol E-Book

Charles Dickens.

• Herausgeber: Pulp the Classics
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

Christmas?! What a load of Humbug. Mistletoe and Wine just don't do it for Scrooge; he's a workaholic miser with an attitude problem. If he doesn't change his ways, he'll end up with no friends and Tiny Tim won't last the year. Let's hope some spooky night-time visitors can put the jingle back in his bells!

Leseprobe

This cat was a drag … 'til a midnight wake-up call

Christmas?! What a load of Humbug. Mistletoe and Wine just don’t do it for Scrooge; he’s a workaholic miser with an attitude problem. If he doesn’t change his ways, he’ll end up with no friends and Tiny Tim won’t last the year. Let’s hope some spooky night-time visitors can put the jingle back in his bells!

Charles John Huffam Dickens (7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world’s most memorable fictional characters and is generally regarded as the greatest novelist of the Victorian period. During his life, his works enjoyed unprecedented fame, and by the twentieth century his literary genius was broadly acknowledged by critics and scholars. His novels and short stories continue to be widely popular.

Born in Portsmouth, England, Dickens left school to work in a factory after his father was thrown into debtors’ prison. Although he had little formal education, his early impoverishment drove him to succeed. Over his career he edited a weekly journal for 20 years, wrote 15 novels, 5 novellas and hundreds of short stories and non-fiction articles, lectured and performed extensively, was an indefatigable letter writer, and campaigned vigorously for children’s rights, education, and other social reforms.

Dickens sprang to fame with the 1836 serial publication of The Pickwick Papers. Within a few years he had become an international literary celebrity, famous for his humour, satire, and keen observation of character and society. His novels, most published in monthly or weekly instalments, pioneered the serial publication of narrative fiction, which became the dominant Victorian mode for novel publication.

Dickens was regarded as the literary colossus of his age. This novella, A Christmas Carol, is one of the most influential works ever written, and it remains popular and continues to inspire adaptations in every artistic genre. His creative genius has been praised by fellow writers—from Leo Tolstoy to GK Chesterton and George Orwell—for its realism, comedy, prose style, unique characterisations, and social criticism.

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Titles in this series

A Christmas Carol

The Great Gatsby

The Hound of the Baskervilles

The Picture of Dorian Gray

Pride and Prejudice

Robinson Crusoe

Tess of the d’Urbervilles

Wuthering Heights

LIST OF CHARACTERS

Bob Cratchit, clerk to Ebenezer Scrooge

Peter Cratchit, a son of the preceding

Tim Cratchit (Tiny Tim), a cripple, youngest son of Bob Cratchit

Mr Fezziwig, a kind-hearted, jovial merchant

Fred, Scrooge’s nephew

Ghost of Christmas Past, a phantom showing things of the past

Ghost of Christmas Present, a spirit of a kind, generous and hearty nature

Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, an apparition showing the shadows of things which may yet happen

Ghost of Jacob Marley, a spectre of Scrooge’s former partner in business

Joe, a marine-store dealer and receiver of stolen goods

Ebenezer Scrooge, a grasping, covetous old man, the surviving partner of Scrooge & Marley

Mr Topper , a bachelor

Dick Wilkins, a fellow apprentice of Scrooge’s

Belle, a comely matron, an old sweetheart of Scrooge’s.

Caroline, wife of one of Scrooge’s debtors

Mrs Cratchit, wife of Bob Cratchit

Belinda and Martha, daughters of the preceding

Mrs Dilber, a laundress

Fan, the sister of Scrooge

Mrs Fezziwig, the worthy partner of Mr Fezziwig

The author’s preface to A Christmas Carol

I have endeavoured in this ghostly little book to raise the ghost of an idea which shall not put my readers out of humour with themselves, with each other, with the season or with me. May it haunt their house pleasantly and no one wish to lay it.

Their faithful friend and servant,

CHARLES DICKENS

December 1843

STAVE ONE

MARLEY’S GHOST

Marley was dead, to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it. And Scrooge’s name was good upon ’Change for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a doornail.

Mind! I don’t mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a doornail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country’s done for. You will, therefore, permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a doornail.

Scrooge knew he was dead? Of course he did. How could it be otherwise? Scrooge and he were partners for I don’t know how many years. Scrooge was his sole executor, his sole administrator, his sole assign, his sole residuary legatee, his sole friend, and sole mourner. And even Scrooge was not so dreadfully cut up by the sad event, but that he was an excellent man of business on the very day of the funeral, and solemnised it with an undoubted bargain.

The mention of Marley’s funeral brings me back to the point I started from. There is no doubt that Marley was dead. This must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to relate. If we were not perfectly convinced that Hamlet’s father died before the play began, there would be nothing more remarkable in his taking a stroll at night, in an easterly wind, upon his own ramparts, than there would be in any other middle-aged gentleman rashly turning out after dark in a breezy spot – say St Paul’s Churchyard, for instance – literally to astonish his son’s weak mind.

Scrooge never painted out Old Marley’s name. There it stood, years afterwards, above the warehouse door: Scrooge and Marley. The firm was known as Scrooge and Marley. Sometimes people new to the business called Scrooge ‘Scrooge’, and sometimes ‘Marley’, but he answered to both names. It was all the same to him.

Oh! but he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dog days; and didn’t thaw it one degree at Christmas.

External heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge. No warmth could warm, no wintry weather chill him. No wind that blew was bitterer than he, no falling snow was more intent upon its purpose, no pelting rain less open to entreaty. Foul weather didn’t know where to have him. The heaviest rain, and snow, and hail, and sleet could boast of the advantage over him in only one respect. They often ‘came down’ handsomely and Scrooge never did.