This book captures all the splendor of Christmas. Included are selections from Christmas favorites such as The Night Before Christmas and A Christmas Carol, as well as time-honored songs such as "Hark the Herald Angels Sing" and "Joy to the World." All of the delights are appropriately gift wrapped in a beautiful holiday package. Includes 45 full-color, beautiful illustrations.
This book is bound like a Victorian journal, complete with its own bookmark. With an introduction by editor Sheila Pickles, the book contains a collection of Christmas-related material: poems, carols, plays, opera lyrics, diary entries, letters, and extracts from novels. Everyone you would expect is included: Charles Dickens, D. H. Lawrence, Sir Walter Scott, Thomas Hardy, G.K. Chesterton, Dylan Thomas, Mark Twain, James Joyce, T.S. Eliot, Christina Rossetti, Alfred Tennyson, Virginia Woolf, and more.
Though many of the works included may be unfamiliar to a modern reader (though this may well encourage them to seek out the source material), there are some inevitable favorites: A Christmas Carol, Little Women, The Wind in the Willows, The Night Before Christmas, and verses from The Bible. Most of the content of this book comes from the 19th century, and so would have felt out of place here.
The book is beautifully presented, and would make a lovely, thoughtful gift, especially for those with an interest in Victorian literature and/or poetry.
