Charles Dickens had a hard childhood, with a bankrupt father, little schooling and a miserable time in a blacking factory sticking labels on tins of boot polish. This is reflected in his three great novels of personal development, David Copperfield, Great Expectations, and Oliver Twist. A Christmas Carol is both a ghost story and a moral tale that has defined the pattern of Christmas celebrations from Victorian to modern times. These four books in one volume represent much of Dickens' finest writing.
Great Expectations was the only one of these books not to be illustrated under the author's direction, but shortly after his death his publishers commissioned F.W. Pailthorpe to prepare the illustrations that are reproduced here. David Copperfield is illustrated by H.K. Brown, Oliver Twist by George Cruikshank, and A Christmas Carol by John Leech, the original illustrators of the books.