A Literary Christmas cover

A Literary Christmas

by British Library

Before Christmas. A visit from St Nicholas / Clement Clarke Moore from The Feast of St Friend / Arnold Bennett The gypsy / Edward Thomas from Sons and lovers / D.H. Lawrence from Cider with Rosie / Laurie Lee from The River Duddon / William Wordsworth from Wuthering Heights / Emily Bronte from A Christmas Carol / Charles Dickens The oxen / Thomas Hardy Bertie's Christmas Eve / Saki The Nativity. A Christmas carol / Christina Rossetti from On the morning of Christ's Nativity / John Milton from The Virgin Mary to the Child Jesus / Elizabeth Barrett Browning A Christmas Carol / G.K. Chesterton Nativity / John Donne Christmas day. from his Diary / Samuel Pepys Music on Christmas morning / Anne Bronte from Orley Farm / Anthony Trollope Christmas at sea / Robert Louis Stevenson from The mill on the Floss / George Eliot Christmas in India / Rudyard Kipling The mistletoe bough / Thomas Haynes Bayly from Christmas pudding / Nancy Mitford Christmas fare. from "Old Christmas" in The sketch book of Washington Irving / Washington Irving from A Christmas carol / Charles Dickens Christmas husbandly fare, from Five hundred pointes of good husbandrie / Thomas Tusser Talking turkeys!! / Benjamin Zephaniah Another Christmas carol / P.G. Wodehouse Christmas at war. Christmas bells / Henry Wadsworth Longfellow A Christmas ghost-story / Thomas Hardy A Christmas prayer / Cyril Winterbotham The truce of Christmas / G.K. Chesterton The holly on the wall / W.H. Davies A child's Christmas. from A child's Christmas in Wales / Dylan Thomas from The Wind in the Willows / Kenneth Grahame The carol of the poor children / Richard Middleton from Little Women / Louisa May Alcott The lost boy / George Mackay Brown Seasonal snow and ice. from his Diary / John Evelyn from Trivia, or, The art of walking the streets of London / John Gay from English hours / Henry James from As you like it / William Shakespeare from Emma / Jane Austen The mahogany tree / William Makepeace Thackeray from The Pickwick papers / Charles Dickens New Year. Dirge for the year / Percy Bysshe Shelley Ceremony upon Candlemas Eve / Robert Herrick Sonnet / Thomas Hood Ring out, wild bells, from In memoriam / Alfred Tennyson

Chappie’s discussion starters

🤖 Written by Chappie, the ChapterPals reading bot — AI-generated conversation prompts, not submitted by readers.

  1. Which character stayed with you after you turned the last page, and why?
  2. Was there a moment where you disagreed with a character’s choice? What would you have done?
  3. What theme did this book keep circling back to — and did it earn its ending?
  4. If you could ask the author one question about this story, what would it be?
  5. Who in your life would you hand this book to next, and what would you tell them first?