Audiobook · read by volunteers
À Christmas Carol (version 02)
Charles Dickens (1812–1870)
Read by Glen Hallstrom · 5 chapters · 2 h 43
About the book
Ebenezer Scrooge hates Christmas. He is a miser, cold and hard, who counts his money in a bare room and will not spare a coin for the poor. On Christmas Eve he is visited by the ghost of his dead partner, Jacob Marley, who warns him that he is heading for a terrible fate. Three more spirits follow, the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come, and they show him what he was, what he is and what he may become. Charles Dickens's short, warm-hearted ghost story has been told so often that it is easy to forget how good it is at the source. Five staves, about two hours and three quarters, in this second LibriVox version, make an ideal winter listen.
Introduction
Charles Dickens lived from 1812 to 1870. One of the most widely read English novelists of the Victorian age, he wrote Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, Great Expectations and many others. A Christmas Carol, published in 1843, was the first of a series of Christmas books that he wrote in the following years.
The full title is A Christmas Carol in Prose, Being a Ghost Story of Christmas. It is a Victorian morality tale of an old and bitter miser, Ebenezer Scrooge, who is transformed, in the course of a single night, by a series of ghostly visits. Dickens wrote it in a few weeks, and it is sometimes credited with helping to shape the modern idea of Christmas as a season of generosity and family gathering. It was a great popular success, and Dickens himself later gave public readings from it. Behind its festive warmth lies a serious concern about poverty and the duties of the prosperous, which Dickens had seen at close quarters since his own difficult childhood.
The story is divided not into chapters but into staves, a musical term meaning the verses of a carol. This recording is the second version made by LibriVox volunteers, and it has five staves, lasting about two hours and forty minutes.
Why listen? Because the story is short, atmospheric and surprisingly funny. Heard aloud, as Dickens intended, its humour and its scenes of dread and joy come alive.
Public domain
Charles Dickens died in 1870: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text