A Christmas Carol

Why it’s on the list: Dickens’s 1843 novella in which Ebenezer Scrooge is visited by his dead partner and three spirits who show him his past, the present he refuses to see, and the grave nobody will mourn. The book most likely to be assumed already known, and it rewards an actual reading — Scrooge’s conversion is argued, not merely frightened into him.

Where I heard about it

• Founders Classical Academy of Lewisville, Texas — on its seventh-grade reading list, posted by the Classic Learning Test in September 2026 as an example of what a classical curriculum assigns. The full eight-year sequence is on Founders Classical Academy Reading List.

About this edition

Dickens wrote it in six weeks, published it at his own expense, and sold six thousand copies in the first week.

Connections

• Founders Classical Academy Reading List — the curriculum this came from; 56 unique titles across 5th through 12th grade.
• Classical Education — the movement whose canon this list is.
• Charles Dickens
• Literature