A Christmas Carol

Published in 1843

Categories: For TeensClassics for Adults

The Ghost of Christmas Present, a giant in a green robe and a holly crown, sits on a throne of food holding up a torch, as small Scrooge looks on in his nightshirt
Illustration: John Leech, first edition (1843)

On a freezing Christmas Eve, the miser Ebenezer Scrooge sends away the men collecting for the poor and goes home alone. That night the ghost of his dead partner, Jacob Marley, comes through the locked door in chains, and warns him that three more spirits are on their way. Charles Dickens wrote this short ghost story in six weeks in 1843, and it has been read aloud at Christmas ever since.