Preface to Dicken’s Christmas Stories

Name: A Christmas Carol - Preface to Dicken’s Christmas Stories
Author: Charles Dickens

THE narrow space within which it was necessary to confine these Christmas Stories when they were originally published, rendered their construction a matter of some difficulty, and almost necessitated what is peculiar in their machinery. I could not attempt great elaboration of detail, in the working out of character within such limits. My chief purpose was, in a whimsical kind of masque which the good humour of the season justified, to awaken some loving and forbearing thoughts, never out of season in a Christian land.

C. D.

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Related Resources

Charles Dickens
The Victorian Period

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Chicago: Charles Dickens, "Preface to Dicken’s Christmas Stories," A Christmas Carol Original Sources, accessed May 1, 2025, http://www.originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=RCMWGA43BSR34KU.

MLA: Dickens, Charles. "Preface to Dicken’s Christmas Stories." A Christmas Carol, Original Sources. 1 May. 2025. http://www.originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=RCMWGA43BSR34KU.

Harvard: Dickens, C, 'Preface to Dicken’s Christmas Stories' in A Christmas Carol. Original Sources, retrieved 1 May 2025, from http://www.originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=RCMWGA43BSR34KU.