The Haunted Man and the Ghost’s Bargain: A fancy for Christmas-time
by Charles Dickens

“Lord! Keep my memory green.”

This short novel is the fifth and last of Dickens’ Christmas stories and was first published in 1848. The novella relates to the spirit of Christmas rather than about the holidays themselves, linking back to the first Christmas story, A Christmas Carol. 

The story centres on Professor Redlaw, who is a teacher of Chemistry. Redlaw is often brooding about wrongs done to him and the anxiety that he feels about his past. 

Redlaw is haunted by a spirit, who is not so much a ghost as a twin and is “an awful likeness of himself … with his features, and his bright eyes, and his grizzled hair, and dressed in the gloomy shadow of his dress …”. The spirit explains to Redlaw that he can cause him to “forget the sorrow, wrong, and trouble you have known … to cancel their remembrance …”. 

The novella concludes with Redlaw, like Ebenezer Scrooge, as a changed and more loving man. He learns to be humble at Christmas time. 

The final sentence, “Lord! Keep my memory green”, reminds us to keep our minds young in ideas and thoughts.

This new edition features all of the illustrations from the original publication.