Servicio Al Cliente

This PDF version of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol
is a gift of the season from Stealth Press (http://www.stealthpress.com). It was
designed and produced by Paula Guran (paulag@stealthpress.com).

Preface
Since its first publication in 1843, A Christmas Carol has become a part of our culture.
It’s never been out of print and there are dozens of editions available today. Artists asdiverse
as Gustave Doré and those of the Walt Disney Studios have provided illustrations. There are
prequels and sequels. You can listen to it on audio versions, download other e-books of it, read
it online in both hypertext and text. There are over 200 film and television adaptations, plus
stage dramas and musicals, parodies, abridgements, animations, children’s editions and more.
It’s beentranslated into numerous languages.
Despite the ubiquity of A Christmas Carol, I suspect—as Joseph Cusumano did in his
Transforming Scrooge: Dickens’ Blueprint for a Spiritual Awakening (a very 90s-sort of perspective viewing Scrooge’s night with the ghosts as a 7-step therapy process that touches on
near-death experience, alien abduction, and kundalini yoga)—“that very few people have actuallyread the book. An informal survey to test my belief leads me to conclude that less than ten
percent of all people have read Dickens’ in its classic form.”
Reading A Christmas Carol , even in the 21st century, is still both rewarding and entertaining. Despite its period language, modern readers will still find it amusing and full of meaning. Even its ghosts can still make an impression. Marley’sGhost, fettered with the weight of
chains he forged in life, is doomed to the incessant torture of remorse with no hope for rest or
peace. The Ghost of Christmas Past gives a painful look at that which came before and can not
be changed. The Spirit of Christmas Present and his revelation of Man's appallingly deprived
children—“This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and allof their
degree...”—is sadly as apt today as ever. His answer to Scrooge’s condemnation of religion’s role
in injustice—“'There are some upon this earth of yours,' returned the Spirit, 'who lay claim to

know us, and who do their deeds of passion, pride, ill-will, hatred, envy, bigotry, and selfishness
in our name, who are as strange to us and all out kith and kin, as if they had never lived.Remember that, and charge their doings on themselves, not us.'”—is particularly poignant in
2001, no matter what one’s spiritual beliefs. Finally the dark and silent Ghost of Christmas
Future—an inexorable reminder of mortality and the need for redemption. Who among us could
withstand the rigors of a visitation by these spectres?
The illustrations reproduced here are by John Leech and comefrom the original 1843
edition. Incidental art—like that below—is taken from a variety of 19th Century Christmas
cards. The text is based on the 1897 Gadshill Edition by Chapman and Hall, Ltd. of London
Stealth Press would also like to remind you that books make treasured gifts. Please visit
our Web site (http://www.stealthpress.com) and see what treasures we have to offer.

Paula GuranNovember 2001

Stave 1
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 door-nail.
Mind! I don't mean to say that Iknow, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly
dead about a door-nail. 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...