Adequate but still missing some spots

books:


	• The Annotated Christmas Carol: A Christmas Carol in Prose Charles Dickens, Michael Patrick Hearn W. W. Norton & Company, 2003 - 288 pages average customer review:based on 16 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

The Annotations are what makes it

At this time of year it is SOOO sweet to be able to read a book that tells you how things used to be. The footnotes are amazing. This book is just great. Merry Christmas!

Adequate but still missing some spots

I have been reading "A Christmas Carol" almost every year at Christmas since my teens. My original copy was just about dead, and then I saw this. I already own the "Annotated Alice in Wonderland" and think it is wonderful, so I had high hopes for this book.

The annotations are great for literary stuff - influences on Dickens, prior work that is similar, the history of Christmas books, etc. The illustrations are also wonderful, not merely the original ones but also contemporary pictures of life in London as well as some other famous early illustrations of "A Christmas Carol", notably Gustave Dore.

It is much less informative when it comes to vocabulary. For example, in the first stave there is a description of Bob Cratchit going down a 'slide' on Cornhill. I have always known that this was unlikely to have been today's playground slide, but I didn't know what it was. There is no annotation to this question, but my question has been at least partially answered by an accompanying illustration which shows a plank of wood which has been coated with ice. In the same paragraph there is no explanation of the word comforter - not a filled quilted blanket, as today in America, but a long knitted scarf.

Overall, I have to give this an average rating, mainly because if you are going to do an annotation, you had better do it completely. This is especially true in this case where the author has had almost 20 years to fix things.

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Great Christmas Gift

I bought this as a Christmas gift for my husband. He loves it. It will take center stage on our coffee table every Christmas.

Adds layers of depth to the text

If you're like me and you had never read A Christmas Carol before, this is the one to read. If you're unlike me and you've read it 1 to 100 times before, I recommend reading this one and digging deeply into all the extra information provided. With all the archaic phrases and slang comments regarding things like locations in London, I'm uncertain how Americans over the years have truly felt as if they understood all the dialogue contained herein without the benefit of annotation.

I (like most, I imagine) knew a rough outline of the story but I knew nothing of the details or the language and style in which the story is presented. I am so glad I finally read it, and read this version! I never could have gotten as much out of this story as I did, had the annotation not been present. I often found myself detouring from the story itself, to read the story-behind-the-story about from where Dickens grabbed this line, or what this reference had to do with London life during this era, etc...

I picked this up at the library but there is enough information and depth in this book that I know I cannot uncover all its treasures in the time allotted from the library. In short, before I was even finished reading it, it had made its way to my "Books To Buy" list. There shall be many other books checked out, bought, read, and other topics looked into due to the notes given here. Also, for those of you who also just truly enjoy the presentation and physicality of a book, this is very nice. It has lovely reprints (color and b&w) of old drawings, engravings, covers of old editions, etc...

This great edition also sparked me into looking for more Annotated books, hoping this was part of a series. It turns out there are Annotated Brothers Grimm, Wizard of Oz, Huckleberry Finn, etc...! I have much good reading ahead of me.

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reviews: 1, page 2, 3, 4

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