A Christmas Carol

Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol in six weeks in the autumn of 1843, partly to pay his debts and partly in anger at what he had seen of children in the mines and ragged schools. He called its chapters staves, the verses of a carol, and it has been read aloud at Christmas ever since.

This is the whole book, in the public-domain text. Before each stave is a short note on what happens; after it, the harder words, the lines worth keeping, and questions for the meeting. Words with a dotted underline are glossed: tap one to see what Dickens meant by it. At the foot of the page are the full glossary, the Potent Quotables and a memory deck.

Glossary

Every harder word, A to Z, glossed in the sense it has here. Each links to the place it is used. Rarity is measured by how seldom the word turns up in English at large; the commonest words are never glossed.

Lines Worth Keeping

Every line the Society marked, in order.

Potent Quotables

The book's most-quoted lines, as first-letter study cards: read the first letters and say the line, then check it against the full text.

Memory Work