A Christmas Carol in Prose, Being a Ghost Story of Christmas

I have endeavoured in this ghostly little book, to raise the ghost of an idea, which shall not put my readers out of humor with themselves, with each other, with the season, or with me. May it haunt their houses pleasantly, and no one wish to lay it.

Their faithful friend and servant, C. D. December, 1843.

Stave One: Marley's Ghost.

Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it. And Scrooge's name was good upon 'Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.

Mind! I don't mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the country's done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a door-nail.

Audio Files	128Kbps MP3	Ogg Vorbis	64Kbps MP3
A Christmas Carol - Stave 1	35.3 MB	25.6 MB	17.7 MB
A Christmas Carol - Stave 2	32.2 MB	23.7 MB	16.1 MB
A Christmas Carol - Stave 3	42.2 MB	30.3 MB	21.1 MB
A Christmas Carol - Stave 4	28.7 MB	20.2 MB	14.4 MB
A Christmas Carol - Stave 5	11.5 MB	8.1 MB	5.8 MB

Composition Licence: This Image (and other media files) is in the public domain because its copyright has expired. This applies to the United States, where Works published prior to 1978 were copyright protected for a maximum of 75 years. See Circular 1 "COPYRIGHT BASICS" PDF from the U.S. Copyright Office. Works published before 1923, in this case 1843, are now in the public domain.

and also in countries that figure copyright from the date of death of the artist (post mortem auctoris) in this case Charles John Huffam Dickens (February 7, 1812 – June 9, 1870) and that most commonly run for a period of 50 to 70 years from that date.

Performance Licence Disclaimer: Creative Commons license: Public Domain by LibriVox.

Artist/Composer: Charles Dickens
Date: 2007-01-30
Source: Librivox recording of a public-domain text
Keywords: librivox; fiction; christmas; charles dickens; scrooge; tiny tim; cratchett; ghosts
Creative Commons license: Public Domain