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    The Life of Our Lord: Written for His Children During the Years 1846 to 1849
    The Life of Our Lord: Written for His Children During the Years 1846 to 1849
    The Life of Our Lord: Written for His Children During the Years 1846 to 1849
    Ebook75 pages1 hour

    The Life of Our Lord: Written for His Children During the Years 1846 to 1849

    By Charles Dickens

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    Charles Dickens's other Christmas classic, with a new introduction by Dickens's great-great-grandson, Gerald Charles Dickens.

    Charles Dickens wrote The Life of Our Lord during the years 1846-1849, just about the time he was completing David Copperfield. In this charming, simple retelling of the life of Jesus Christ, adapted from the Gospel of St. Luke, Dickens hoped to teach his young children about religion and faith. Since he wrote it exclusively for his children, Dickens refused to allow publication.

    For eighty-five years the manuscript was guarded as a precious family secret, and it was handed down from one relative to the next. When Dickens died in 1870, it was left to his sister-in-law, Georgina Hogarth. From there it fell to Dickens's son, Sir Henry Fielding Dickens, with the admonition that it should not be published while any child of Dickens lived.

    Just before the 1933 holidays, Sir Henry, then the only living child of Dickens, died, leaving his father's manuscript to his wife and children. He also bequeathed to them the right to make the decision to publish The Life of Our Lord. By majority vote, Sir Henry's widow and children decided to publish the book in London. In 1934, Simon Schuster published the first American edition, which became one of the year's biggest bestsellers.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster
    Release dateJan 22, 2013
    ISBN9781439142585
    Author

    Charles Dickens

    Charles Dickens was born in 1812 and grew up in poverty. This experience influenced ‘Oliver Twist’, the second of his fourteen major novels, which first appeared in 1837. When he died in 1870, he was buried in Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey as an indication of his huge popularity as a novelist, which endures to this day.

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    Reviews for The Life of Our Lord

    3.5/5

    41 ratings4 reviews

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    • 4/5
      This is a nice book to read each year as a reminder of the reason for the Christmas season.
    • 2/5
      Diluted by the re-telling.
    • 5/5
      A sweet, sweet story. I can picture his children at his knees while DIckens reads this to them.
    • 1/5
      I think that Dickens misses the whole point of the life of Christ. He defines Christianity as doing your best to earn God's forgiveness. While I agree that it is good, noble, right, etc. to be kind to others, that is not the essential component to Christianity. I also was struck with what appeared to be antisemitism (Jesus vs. the Jews). That idea ignores the fact that Jesus and his 12 disciples were Jews themselves.

    Book preview

    The Life of Our Lord - Charles Dickens

    My Dear Children,

    I am very anxious that you should know something about the History of Jesus Christ. For everybody ought to know about Him. No one ever lived who was so good, so kind, so gentle, and so sorry for all people who did wrong, or were in any way ill or miserable, as He was. And as He is now in Heaven, where we hope to go, and all to meet each other after we are dead, and there be happy always together, you never can think what a good place Heaven is, without knowing who He was and what He did.

    He was born, a long long time ago—nearly two thousand years ago—at a place called Bethlehem. His father and mother lived in a city called Nazareth, but they were forced by business to travel to Bethlehem. His father’s name was Joseph, and His mother’s name was Mary. And the town being very full of people, also brought there by business, there was no room for Joseph and Mary in the Inn or in any house; so they went into a stable to lodge, and in this stable Jesus Christ was born. There was no cradle or anything of that kind there, so Mary laid her pretty little boy in what is called the manger, which is the place the horses eat out of. And there He fell

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