A Christmas Carol. by DICKENS, Charles - 1946: In Prose. Being a Ghost Story of Christmas. With illustrations by John Leech.

London and New York: The King Penguin Books,, 1946. Pictorial binding by Bayntun Octavo (176 x 117 mm). Recent red morocco by Bayntun, spine lettered in gilt, gilt holly and ivy motifs to compartments, gilt holly and ivy frame to covers, front cover with coloured morocco onlay vignette after the frontispiece, gilt turn-ins, marbled endpapers, gilt edges. Housed in a custom red cloth slipcase. A fine copy. A beautifully bound copy of Dickens's Christmas classic, being the first King Penguin facsimile edition, after the original first edition of 1843. A Christmas Carol was an instant success, reportedly selling all 6,000 copies of the first edition on the first day of publication, and Dickens went on to write four more small festive books for each successive Christmas. Of the five Christmas books, however, it is A Christmas Carol which has best stood the test of time, and remains the most famous of all Christmas stories. "It is rather as if Dickens had rewritten a religious tract and filled it both with his own memories and with all the concerns of the period. He had, in other words, created a modern fairy story. And so it has remained" (Peter Ackroyd, p. 413).