A Christmas Carol Great Expectations Annotated

A reprinting of the 1843 first edition, complete with the original illustrations, is supplemented by over eighty related sketches and annotations on and analyses of the text and historical notes on the writing of "The Christmas Carol."

Two classics in one! Wonderfully spread out in one, annotated, compact volume. Many vintage books are increasingly scarce and expensive. We published this volume in an affordable, modern, high-quality edition complete with a biography of the author.Includes: A Christmas Carol (1843)Great Expectations (1867 edition

A Christmas Carol. In Prose. Being a Ghost Story of Christmas, commonly known as A Christmas Carol, is a novella by Charles Dickens, first published in London by Chapman & Hall in 1843 and illustrated by John Leech. A Christmas Carol recounts the story of Ebenezer Scrooge, an elderly miser who is visited by the ghost of his former business partner Jacob Marley and the spirits of Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come. After their visits, Scrooge is transformed into a kinder, gentler man.

Two classics in one! Wonderfully spread out in one, annotated and illustrated, compact volume. Many vintage books are increasingly scarce and expensive. We published this volume in an affordable, modern, high-quality edition complete with a biography of the author.Includes: A Christmas Carol (1843)Great Expectations (1867 edition

Great Expectations is the story of Pip, an orphan boy adopted by a blacksmith's family, who has good luck and great expectations, and then loses both his luck and his expectations. Through this rise and fall, however, Pip learns how to find happiness. He learns the meaning of friendship and the meaning of love and, of course, becomes a better person for it.The story opens with the narrator, Pip, who introduces himself and describes a much younger Pip staring at the gravestones of his parents. This tiny, shivering bundle of a boy is suddenly terrified by a man dressed in a prison uniform. The man tells Pip that if he wants to live, he'll go down to his house and bring him back some food and a file for the shackle on his leg.Pip runs home to his sister, Mrs. Joe Gragery, and his adoptive father, Joe Gragery. Mrs. Joe is a loud, angry, nagging woman who constantly reminds Pip and her husband Joe of the difficulties she has gone through to raise Pip and take care of the house. Pip finds solace from these rages in Joe, who is more his equal than a paternal figure, and they are united under a common oppression.Pip steals food and a pork pie from the pantry shelf and a file from Joe's forge and brings them back to the escaped convict the next morning. Soon thereafter, Pip watches the man get caught by soldiers and the whole event soon disappears from his young mind.Mrs. Joe comes home one evening, quite excited, and proclaims that Pip is going to "play" for Miss Havisham, "a rich and grim lady who lived in a large and dismal house."Pip is brought to Miss Havisham's place, a mansion called the "Satis House," where sunshine never enters. He meets a girl about his age, Estella, "who was very pretty and seemed very proud." Pip instantly falls in love with her and will love her the rest of the story. He then meets Miss Havisham, a willowy, yellowed old woman dressed in an old wedding gown. Miss Havisham seems most happy when Estella insults Pip's coarse hands and his thick boots as they play.Pip is insulted, but thinks there is something wrong with him. He vows to change, to become uncommon, and to become a gentleman.Pip continues to visit Estella and Miss Havisham for eight months and learns more about their strange life. Miss Havisham brings him into a great banquet hall where a table is set with food and large wedding cake. But the food and the cake are years old, untouched except by a vast array of rats, beetles and spiders which crawl freely through the room. Her relatives all come to see her on the same day of the year: her birthday and wedding day, the day when the cake was set out and the clocks were stopped many years before; i.e. the day Miss Havisham stopped living.Pip begins to dream what life would be like if he were a gentleman and wealthy. This dream ends when Miss Havisham asks Pip to bring Joe to visit her, in order that he may start his indenture as a blacksmith. Miss Havisham gives Joe twenty five pounds for Pip's service to her and says good-bye.Pip explains his misery to his readers: he is ashamed of his home, ashamed of his trade. He wants to be uncommon, he wants to be a gentleman. He wants to be a part of the environment that he had a small taste of at the Manor House.Early in his indenture, Mrs. Joe is found lying unconscious, knocked senseless by some unknown assailant. She has suffered some serious brain damage, having lost much of voice, her hearing, and her memory. Furthermore, her "temper was greatly improved, and she was patient." To help with the housework and to take care of Mrs. Joe, Biddy, a young orphan friend of Pip's, moves into the house.The years pass quickly. It is the fourth year of Pip's apprenticeship and he is sitting with Joe at the pub when they are approached by a stranger. Pip recognizes him, and his "smell of soap," as a man he had once run into at Miss Havisham's house years before...

This Workman Family Classic edition contains: * Background/Introduction * Biography * Footnotes * a scriptural passage and discussion question after each day's reading* Extension activitiesShare the Dickens Christmas Classic with your FamilyThis edition of A Christmas Carol is perfect for families to read together, and has been specially formatted into 24 readings suitable for reading during December. experience one of the greatest Christmas stories of all time all over again!

After celebrating the joy and charity of Christmas, A Christmas Carol is foremost a condemnation of 19th-century Victorian England's division between the rich and poor, the Haves and Have-Nots. London was a great world power, rich from industry and colonial influence, yet poverty ran amok through its streets and factories.The Poor Laws were England's response to poverty. However, the Poor Laws barely kept the poor alive while trampling their dignity; arduous labor in workhouses or humiliating stays in debtors' prisons (both of which Scrooge references in Stave One) were the two welfare options for the poor. Even worse, poverty was profoudnly cyclical. Poor children, afflicted by rickets from working long hours in polluted factories, had little chance to survive into healthy, let alone wealthy, adults.

More than a 100 years after his death, Charles Dickens is still entertaining readers with his classic "A Christmas Carol." Gather the family around for a wonderful journey through time with this life affirming tale, excellent for reading aloud on Christmas Eve. You know the story..... Ebenezer Scrooge is a bitter old man who "will keep Christmas in my own way", which is not at all. People cringe when they see him coming. Dogs cower. But that is all about to change. He is visited by the ghost of his deceased partner, Jacob Marley, dragging the chains he has forged for himself in life, and learns that it is not too late for him. In "A Christmas Carol," Scrooge is visited by three more spirits that Christmas eve. His past, his present and his future. Each take him on a fantastic journey through time and space, showing him how his ways are wrong, and what will happen if he doesn't change. Scrooge goes through subtle changes at first, is humbled by the spirits, and then he is transformed from a bitter man to a caring human being. His new found appreciation of mankind is contagious. In the end, "A Christmas Carol" teaches that the changes not just so he can have a better after life, but because he really cares about life and humanity. A timeless classic, "Christmas Carol" has much to teach us today!