A Christmas Carol
Scrooge, the coldest miser in London, is visited by three ghosts on Christmas Eve and given one last chance to become human. Dickens' greatest Christmas story.
About this edition
Dickens wrote this in six weeks in 1843, paid for the printing himself, and priced it low so working families could buy it. It sold out by Christmas. The structure is theatre — a counting house, a door knocker with a face, three visitors and one night in which a man is shown his own life from outside. Scrooge's change works because it isn't a moral lecture: he is shown the people he hurt, the evening he was happy, the small boy left in the cold who reminds him of himself. That is why it still gets read every December and adapted every year. The complete text, staves in order, in a format that fits one sitting — which is how Dickens intended it to be heard, read aloud.
STAVE I: 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 I know, 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 door-nail.
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 Saint 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 grind-stone, 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.
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Quick answers about A Christmas Carol
What is A Christmas Carol about?
Scrooge, the coldest miser in London, is visited by three ghosts on Christmas Eve and given one last chance to become human. Dickens' greatest Christmas story.
Is A Christmas Carol free to read?
Yes. Every story on RapidTale is free to read in the browser, with no sign-up and nothing to install.
How long does it take to read?
This story runs 5 chapters — most readers finish in one sitting, and you can stop and return to any chapter using the contents list.
Who wrote it?
Classic Books — this is the complete public-domain text, published in its original form.