By Charles Dickens

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…”

Ever since its publication, The Cricket on the Hearth has been the subject of dramatisation. Within two weeks of its publication there was a production on the stage in London and the habit has continued ever since.

As an aural version of the chocolate box Victorian Christmas, we think you can’t get closer than this!