A note before you read
Dickens wrote this “Ghostly little book” in about six weeks in the autumn of 1843, published it at his own expense on December 19th, and watched the first printing sell out by Christmas Eve. He divided it not into chapters but into staves — a stave being a line of music — because the book is, as its title says, a carol: a song in prose about how the season can win a person back.
We’ve laid it out one stave per page, the way it’s best read: one per evening, December 20th through 24th, if you’d like to arrive at Christmas morning alongside Scrooge. (The whole story behind this book is in Dickens Didn’t Invent Christmas — and what’s actually on the Cratchits’ table is in its own exploration.)
The Staves
- Marley’s Ghost
- The First of the Three Spirits
- The Second of the Three Spirits
- The Last of the Spirits
- The End of It
Questions to carry with you
- Scrooge is shown his past, present, and future — but which of the three ghosts actually changes him, and why that one?
- Dickens gives the Cratchits almost nothing material and fills their Christmas with joy anyway. Is the book sentimental about poverty, or doing something sharper?
- Marley’s chain was forged “link by link, and yard by yard.” What are chains made of in this story — and when is one too heavy to take off?
- Why does the story insist Scrooge see his own name — on the door, in the counting-house, on the stone — at every turning point?
- The book ends by telling us Scrooge “knew how to keep Christmas well.” After five staves, what does keeping Christmas well actually mean?
Source text: Project Gutenberg (public domain). Return to the Reading Room shelf.