An immediate bestseller when it was first published in December 1843, A Christmas Carol has endured ever since as a perennial Yuletide favorite. Charles Dickens's beloved tale about the miserly Ebenezer Scrooge, who comes to know the meaning of kindness, charity, and goodwill through a haunting Christmas Eve encounter with four ghosts, is a heartwarming celebration of the spirit of Christmas. This Modern Library Paperback Classics edition also includes two other popular Christmas stories by Dickens: "The Chimes," in which a man, persuaded by hypocritical cant that the poor deserve their misery, is shown what his pessimistic resignation might lead to in a vision conjured by the pealing of bells, and "The Haunted Man," Dickens's last Christmas tale, which features one of his great comic families, the Tetterbys.