The ultimate Christmas gift for book lovers: a gorgeous collectible boxed set of the beloved hardcover Penguin Christmas Classics The six volumes in the Penguin Christmas Classics are not only our most beloved Christmas tales, they also have given us much of what we love about the holiday itself. Charles Dickens’
A Christmas Carol revived in Victorian England such Christmas hallmarks as the Christmas tree, holiday cards, and caroling. The Yuletide yarns of Anthony Trollope, brought together in
Christmas at Thompson Hall and Other Christmas Stories, popularized throughout the British Empire and around the world the trappings of Christmas in London. L. Frank Baum’s
The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus created the origin story for the presiding spirit of Christmas as we know it. The holiday tales of Louisa May Alcott, collected in
A Merry Christmas and Other Christmas Stories, shaped the ideal of an American Christmas. Nikolai Gogol’s
The Night Before Christmas brought forth some of our earliest Christmas traditions as passed down through folk tales. And E. T. A. Hoffmann’s
The Nutcracker inspired the most famous ballet in history, one seen by millions in the twilight of every year.
Beautifully designed hardcovers—with foil-stamped jackets, decorative endpapers, and nameplates for personalization—in a small trim size that makes them perfect stocking stuffers, Penguin Christmas Classics embody the spirit of giving that is at the heart of our most time-honored stories about the holiday.
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
On sale: October 4, 2016
Page count: 912 Pages
ISBN: 9780143129783
Charles Dickens (1812–1870) worked as an attorney’s clerk and newspaper reporter until his
Sketches by Boz (1836) and
The Pickwick Papers (1837) brought him the amazing and instant success that was to be his for the remainder of his life, during which time he published masterpieces such as
Oliver Twist,
David Copperfield,
Great Expectations, and
A Tale of Two Cities.
Anthony Trollope (1815–1882), a British novelist and senior civil servant in the British Postal Service, published more than forty novels and many short stories that are regarded by some as among the greatest of nineteenth-century fiction.
L. Frank Baum (1856–1919) is the author of
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, the 1900 novel that inspired the classic 1939 film starring Judy Garland.
Louisa May Alcott (1832–1888), who campaigned for women’s suffrage and temperance and was a neighbor of Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Nathaniel Hawthorne, wrote many novels including
Little Women.
Nikolai Gogol (1809–1852), who was born in Ukraine but lived some of his life in Russia, was a novelist and playwright best known for his short stories “The Nose” and “The Overcoat,” as well as for the novel
Dead Souls.
E. T. A. Hoffmann (1776–1822) was one of the best known and most influential authors of his time, who exploited the grotesque and the bizarre in a manner unmatched by any other Romantic writer.
Acclaim for the Penguin Christmas Classics“For lit nerds and loved ones who are notoriously hard to shop for, you can’t go wrong with these festively bound classics. . . . Their size makes them perfectly stocking-stuffable.” —
Entertainment Weekly, “The Must List” “Leave it to the folks at Penguin—who gave us Gothed-out editions of horror classics for Halloween—to package these . . . slim Yuletide-themed volumes.” —
Newsday, “Best Books to Give as Holiday Gifts” “Remember how Christmas was celebrated before Black Friday with these nineteenth-century authors, in small uniform volumes wrapped in pretty jackets.” —
USA Today, “Holiday Gift Books So Pretty, No Need to Wrap” “Beautifully designed.” —
The Washington Post
