A literary Christmas

From its very origins-as a story in a holy book-Christmas has been celebrated in words. Poets and writers of all sorts, and from all over, have honored the season with their pens, and A Literary Christmas gathers the best of those pieces in a package that anyone would be happy to find beneath their tree on Christmas morning.

Within these covers we find Dickens' three spirits keeping company with the jovial Mr. Pickwick, P. G. Wodehouse lamenting Christmas on a diet even as Thomas Tusser counts the cost of a Tudor feast, Jane Austen snowbound in Bath and Kipling importing an English Christmas to India, John Donne turning to the religious side of the holiday and Nancy Mitford talking up tinsel and other trappings of the festive season. Together, the selections show the many sides of Christmas-devotional season, family gathering, and frenzy of buying and giving. Classics alternate with lesser-known works, and surprises abound like plums in a good pudding. Beautifully produced, and radiating warmth for winter's most wonderful season, A Literary Christmas is the perfect book for reading aloud on Christmas Eve, a ready-made family tradition.