DICKENS, Charles (1812-1870). A Christmas Carol. In Prose. Being a Ghost Story of Christmas. London: Chapman & Hall, 1843. FIRST EDITION, second issue with the corrected first chapter heading ?Stave One?, the balance of the text uncorrected. FIRST ISSUE COVERS RETAINED (brown cloth stamped in gilt with gilt titling inside a central gilt wreath framed in a blind tooled foliage border) with the closest interval between blind-stamping left margin and left extremity of gilt wreath measuring 14mm and with unbroken ?D? in Dickens. Regarded as Dickens? most widely read novel and considered to be ?the greatest Christmas book ever written in any language? (Eckel p. 116) selling more than 6000 copies in the few days leading up to Christmas. The work was extravagantly costly as Dickens for the first time (and incidentally his last) used color in the tile page and etchings as he wanted to make the book a beautiful gift and to be a celebration of the Christmas spirit. After the initial success, Dickens continued the series throughout the 1840s, maintaining ?the Carol? philosophy to ?strike a sledgehammer blow? for the poor, uneducated, and repressed. Eckel, p. 116; Gimbel A79; Smith II:4.