The Cricket on the Hearth

Dickens vented his social and political concerns in A Christmas Carol and, particularly, The Chimes, but, as he wrote to Angela Burdett-Coutts, The Cricket on the Hearth “is very quiet and domestic.” In this story of a husband’s suspicion of his younger wife, Dickens explored private morality rather than larger social questions. While several critics dismissed The Cricket on the Hearth as overly sentimental, public response was enthusiastic. Seventeen stage adaptations were running in London by the end of January 1846. Few of these dramatizations were authorized by Dickens, and he received very little income from stagings of his fiction. This digital facsimile presents the complete manuscript of The Cricket on the Hearth including the opening of the book and Dickens’s consideration of several alternate titles.