Which Christmas Carol should you experience?

A miser is visited on Christmas Eve by the ghost of his dead partner and then by three spirits, and wakes on Christmas morning a different man. Dickens published it in 1843, in five short staves, and it has been retold every December since.

It has been played by Alastair Sim, George C. Scott, Patrick Stewart and Michael Caine opposite the Muppets; sung by Albert Finney and Kelsey Grammer; animated with Mr Magoo, Scrooge McDuck and Jim Carrey; moved to a television network, a wedding weekend and another planet; and told from the side of Marley, of the ghosts, and of Dickens himself. None of them is the definitive one. Which is right for you depends on what you want this December.

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Or browse every version

If quizzes aren’t your thing, browse instead: 35 versions across reading, watching, listening and playing.

• The Penguin Classics edition, ed. Michael Slater (2003)

  The Carol, with Dickens’s other Christmas writings.

• The Oxford World’s Classics edition, ed. Robert Douglas-Fairhurst (2008)

  All five of Dickens’s Christmas Books in one volume, with notes.

• The Annotated Christmas Carol, ed. Michael Patrick Hearn (2004)

  The story with notes in the margin, the 1843 pictures, and the version Dickens read aloud on tour.

• A Christmas Carol: The Original Manuscript Edition (2016)

  Dickens’s handwritten manuscript, crossings-out and all.

• A Christmas Carol, illustrated by P. J. Lynch (2006)

  Every word of the story, with P. J. Lynch’s paintings.

• The Tim Curry recording (Audible, 2009)

  Tim Curry reads the story, every word, alone.

• Patrick Stewart’s reading (Simon & Schuster Audio)

  Patrick Stewart performs the version he took on stage as a one-man show.

• A Christmas Carol: The Graphic Novel, Original Text (Classical Comics, 2008)

  The story as a full-colour comic, in Dickens’s own words.

• Jack Thorne’s stage version (Old Vic, 2017)

  The play the Old Vic has staged every Christmas since 2017, as a script.

• The Audible full-cast drama, with Derek Jacobi as Dickens

  A full cast, with Derek Jacobi as the narrator and Miriam Margolyes as Christmas Present.

• Focus on the Family Radio Theatre’s A Christmas Carol

  A 90-minute full-cast radio drama, with sound effects and an original score.

• A Christmas Carol (MGM, 1938)

  MGM’s version, with Reginald Owen as Scrooge, in barely over an hour.

• Scrooge (1951), with Alastair Sim

  Alastair Sim’s Scrooge, in black and white. In the US it is called A Christmas Carol.

• A Christmas Carol (1984), with George C. Scott

  George C. Scott’s Scrooge, filmed in Shrewsbury for television.

• A Christmas Carol (1999), with Patrick Stewart

  Patrick Stewart takes his stage Scrooge to film, for TNT.

• Disney’s A Christmas Carol (2009), with Jim Carrey

  Robert Zemeckis’s motion-capture version, with Jim Carrey as Scrooge and all three ghosts.

• A Christmas Carol (BBC One / FX, 2019), with Guy Pearce

  Steven Knight’s version for adults, with Guy Pearce as Scrooge.

• Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol (2020), with Jefferson Mays

  One actor plays every part, more than fifty of them.

• Mister Magoo’s Christmas Carol (1962)

  Mr Magoo plays Scrooge in a Broadway musical, with songs by Jule Styne and Bob Merrill.

• Scrooge (1970), the musical with Albert Finney

  Albert Finney sings Scrooge, with Alec Guinness as Marley.

• Mickey’s Christmas Carol (1983)

  Scrooge McDuck as Scrooge, Mickey as Bob Cratchit, Goofy as Marley.

• The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992)

  Michael Caine plays Scrooge straight, opposite the Muppets, with Gonzo as Charles Dickens.

• A Christmas Carol: The Musical (NBC, 2004), with Kelsey Grammer

  Alan Menken and Lynn Ahrens’s stage musical, filmed with Kelsey Grammer as Scrooge.

• Scrooge: A Christmas Carol (Netflix, 2022)

  An animated musical with Luke Evans as Scrooge and songs by Leslie Bricusse.

• Spirited (2022), with Will Ferrell and Ryan Reynolds

  A musical told from the ghosts’ side, about a man everyone calls beyond redemption.

• Scrooged (1988), with Bill Murray

  A TV executive staging A Christmas Carol live gets the visits himself.

• Blackadder’s Christmas Carol (1988)

  A kind Victorian shopkeeper gets a visit, and learns to be nasty.

• Ghosts of Girlfriends Past (2009)

  A womanising photographer is visited by three ghosts the night before a wedding.

• Doctor Who: “A Christmas Carol” (2010)

  The Doctor travels into a miser’s past to change the man he grows up to be.

• The Man Who Invented Christmas (2017 film)

  Dan Stevens as Dickens, in debt and writing the book against the clock.

• The Man Who Invented Christmas by Les Standiford (2008)

  How a debt-ridden Dickens wrote the book, paid to publish it, and changed Christmas.

• Mr. Dickens and His Carol by Samantha Silva (2017)

  A novel about Dickens with writer’s block, a deadline and a stranger on his night walks.

• Marley by Jon Clinch (2019)

  A novel of Jacob Marley’s life, before he was dead to begin with.

• The Afterlife of Holly Chase by Cynthia Hand (2017)

  A girl who refused to change now works as the Ghost of Christmas Past.

• Ebenezer and the Invisible World (2023)

  A reformed Scrooge fights for London with ghosts on his side.

Start with the book itself

Which edition should you read? compares the Penguin and Oxford collections, the Annotated, the Original Manuscript Edition, P. J. Lynch’s illustrated edition and two recordings.
Every version is the full list.