The Cricket on the Hearth

There is the warmest of Christmas fires in this hearth. It was reportedly written in a matter of weeks as part of Dickens' journalistic output, to catch the Christmas deadline.

Unlike his other seasonal stories, this is not a supernatural tale but one of the perfect domestic scene with which Dickens was so obsessed throughout his writing. It is all here: the warmth of home, the loving little woman, the children, the food and the laughter. All the things that go to make an idealised Christmas are rolled into one very warming story.

The book was a huge commercial success and the best selling of all five of the Christmas books. At the outset its sales doubled that of both The Chimes and A Christmas Carol. William Makepiece Thackeray described it as "illuminated with extra gas, crammed with extra bonbons, French plums and sweetness"....