A Christmas Carol
Complete textEbenezer Scrooge treats Christmas as an interruption to business and regards other people's need with suspicion. A visit from his dead partner Marley unsettles that certainty and prepares him for journeys through scenes of memory, present hardship and possible futures.
Continue readingAbout A Christmas Carol
The narrator's jokes and direct addresses keep the ghost story conversational even when its images become frightening. Domestic warmth, working conditions and the language of accounts repeatedly meet. Notice how Scrooge evaluates people before the visitations, and how seeing particular households challenges the distance that makes those judgments comfortable.
Reading focus
Follow the movement between financial accounting and human obligation through the contrasting Christmas households.
This reading edition contains 28,492 words in 5 original sections. Read the text online with adjustable type and three colour themes, or keep a printable PDF.
Author: Charles Dickens. Language: English. Reading edition: 28 October 2026.
Opening excerpt
Marley was dead, to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it. And Scrooge's name was good upon 'Change for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.
Contents
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Is this the complete A Christmas Carol?
This edition contains the complete English literary text, with 5 sections and 28,492 words. This reading edition preserves the checked English text and its section order. No study notes have been added.
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