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A Christmas Carol

by Charles Dickens

Marley was dead, and the miser Scrooge is about to meet ghosts.

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Original language: EnglishLevel: Intermediate3,258 characters · ≈ 5 minSource: Project Gutenberg

Opening lines

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…

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About the book

A Christmas Carol is a novella by Charles Dickens, first published in London in 1843. It recounts how Ebenezer Scrooge, an elderly miser, is visited by the ghost of his former partner Jacob Marley and the spirits of Christmas Past, Present, and Yet to Come, and is transformed into a kinder man. Its key themes are the treatment of the poor and the possibility of redemption for a selfish man.

About the author

Charles Dickens (7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English writer and journalist, regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era. His literary success began with the 1836 serial publication of The Pickwick Papers, and he went on to write 15 novels and 5 novellas.

Summary prepared with AI from Wikipedia: A Christmas Carol (CC BY-SA)

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