The Christmas Stories by: Charles Dickens

Robert Whitfields narration allows listeners to recognize how much Dickens wrote for the ear. Whitfield reads these stories like he is telling them beside a winter fire.AudioFile

No writer is more identified with the modern idea of Christmas than Charles Dickens. In some ways, Dickens helped define the holiday that we now celebrate by immortalizing it as a time of warmth and sharing with an emphasis on family and friends. Dickens wrote all the stories presented here during the 1850s as contributions to the special Christmas issues of Household Words, the weekly magazine he founded and edited. Included are fictional sketches verging on the autobiographical, recollections of childhood, reflections on past holidays and old friends, as well as tales of misunderstandings and lost opportunities. They reaffirm the virtue of nurturing our traditions and offer a master storytellers vision of the real meaning of Christmas.

Charles Dickens (1812 –1870) was born in Landport, Portsea, England, the second of eight children in a family continually plagued by debt. A legacy brought release from the nightmare of debtors' prison and child labor and afforded him two years of formal schooling. He worked as an attorney's clerk and newspaper reporter until his early writings brought him the amazing success that was to be his for the remainder of his life.

Earphones Awards recipient Robert Whitfield was born in England and worked for the BBC for ten years as a radio news announcer and also worked as a narrator for the Royal National Institute for the Blind in London. In addition to narrating for Blackstone Audiobooks, he involves himself in numerous stage-acting projects in the United States and Europe.