Christmas Stories

Charles Dickens – (1812–1870) – a classic of English literature, one of the greatest prose writers of the 19th century. Dickens possessed a rich imagination, and his stories are populated by a diverse array of dramatic, comic, and tragic characters, people from all walks of life, as well as a wealth of everyday details. The pages of the writer's novels capture scenes from the life of all English society in the 19th century. "Christmas Stories" were written by Dickens in the 1840s and were published as separate books for Christmas. The stories were conceived by the writer as a social sermon, as an appeal addressed to both the rich and the poor. In them, Dickens combines reality with fairy tales, truth with fiction, the fantastic with the everyday. The main character of "A Christmas Carol" – the malicious and greedy Scrooge – the embodiment of selfishness, cruelty, and heartlessness, who despises the poor and thinks only of enriching himself, turns into a kind, caring uncle on Christmas night and visits his impoverished relatives. Dickens makes the reader think about cruelty and injustice, about what he himself could not come to terms with until the end of his life. The book also includes the stories "The Battle of Life" and "Hard Times or The Ghost Bargain".