Christmas Books. By Charles Dickens. (Macmillan and Co.)— The five
" Christmas Books," beginning with " A Christmas Carol " and ending with " The Haunted Man," are included in this volume, to- which Mr. C. Dickens the younger prefixes an intro- duction as interesting as usual Dickens seems certainly to have troubled himself overmuch about his books. He was as much vexed, for instance, that '• The Christmas Carol" produced less than he expected, as if it had not sold at all. " Such a night as I have passed,' he wrote ; "I really believed that I should never get up again until I had passed through the horrors of a fever. I found the ' Carol' account awaiting me, and this was the cause of it. The first six thousand copies show a profit of £230, and the next four thousand will yield as much more." What an awful blow! Only forty times what Milton had for "Paradise Lost "!
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