A Christmas Carol

The full title of Charles Dickens' most famous work is technically A Christmas Carol in Prose, Being a Ghost-Story of Christmas. This novella was published on December 19, 1843, and the first edition run of 6000 copies were sold out by Christmas Eve of that year. The publication of the first edition was fraught with complications, and even though the book was received to positive reviews, profits of the book fell far below Dickens' expectations, and the financial strain caused rifts between Dickens and the original publisher, Chapman & Hall.

The initial publication of A Christmas Carol was challenged by several issues, and those issues are evident in some of the first edition identification notes. The final product of the first edition was printed with a red cloth binding with gilded pages and yellow endpapers. The very first copies were printed with green endpapers, and those copies are exceptionally rare.The first edition contains four colored illustrations and four black and white illustrations. In the first edition, Stave I is printed with the roman numeral, while later editions spell out the number to be printed as Stave One.

For the initial run of A Christmas Carol, Dickens proposed an unheard-of offer--that he would pay for the cost of publishing the first edition, but that he would keep all of the profits. Even though the first run of 6000 copies sold out within two weeks, profits were disappointing.The most famous, or infamous, edition of A Christmas Carol was published in 1844 by Parley's Illuminated Library. The unauthorized version was a condensed version of the novella, and it was sold for twopence. Dickens was infuriated and successfully sued for copyright infringement.