Christmas Penny Readings

Original Sketches for the Season

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Pages: 222

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About this book

Christmas lights and crowded London shops make Hezekiah Thornypath's poverty feel sharper. After his attempt to build a better life in the city fails, he faces Christmas Eve with an empty grate, overdue rent and a family struggling against the cold. George Manville Fenn opens these seasonal sketches with a close account of grief, hardship and the affection that survives inside a nearly bare room.

Christmas Penny Readings ranges beyond that domestic scene. Another passage follows an armed attempt to rescue prisoners in a rocky ravine, where a wounded narrator depends on his companion Abel. The contrast gives a sense of the collection's movement between emotional household stories and urgent adventure. Readers interested in older Christmas fiction will find festive streets set against private distress, with questions of conscience and responsibility emerging through the actions and thoughts of people under pressure.