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.
Everyone already knows this story, so the interesting thing is everything around it: where it came from, what it meant in 1843, and how Dickens performed it.
You know the story by heart and want to read it again slowly, with someone pointing at things in the margin.
What it keeps and what it changes
Keeps: the complete text, with John Leech’s original wood engravings and hand-coloured etchings.
Changes: the page around it. Hearn annotates as you go, adds illustrations by Cruikshank, Doré, Tenniel and Phiz, and prints the Public Reading text Dickens prepared for his American tour of 1867–68.
Whose story is it?
Scrooge’s, with Dickens himself standing just behind it.
How much time does it ask?
A 379-page W. W. Norton hardcover from 2004. It is no longer on Norton’s list; Amazon sellers and libraries have it.
Edited by Michael Patrick Hearn, with Dickens’s Public Reading text from his 1867–68 American tour.
Where to find it
Borrow it free: Borrow on Libby · Find at your library — WorldCat
More Christmas Carols: The Penguin Classics edition, ed. Michael Slater (2003) · The Oxford World’s Classics edition, ed. Robert Douglas-Fairhurst (2008) · A Christmas Carol: The Original Manuscript Edition (2016)