Reading Groups

A Very Dickens Christmas with Amanda Hollander

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3 sessions Thursdays, 6:00 pm EDT - 7:30 pm EDT December 4 to December 18, 2025

The Center for Fiction

The ‘With Books’ option includes the titles required for this group at an additional 10% discount from our Bookstore.

Meeting Dates:
12/4, 12/11, 12/18
In Person at The Center for Fiction

The ways we think of Christmas, both Christian and even the more pagan elements, are deeply rooted in the traditions established during Queen Victoria’s reign and further immortalized in public imagination through the Christmas novellas of Charles Dickens. Beginning with The Chimes, we will read one of Dickens’s Christmas novellas each week in December, followed by The Cricket on the Hearth and culminating with A Christmas Carol, one of his most popular and adapted works. Please note that this will not be a class steeped in religious teachings, but rather a literary reading of Christmas focused on 19th century attitudes toward poverty, economics, models of charity, family structures, and how Christmas becomes what we know it as today at the height of Victorian Empire and in the age of industrialization. To say nothing of the ghosts!

What to read in advance of the first meeting: Please read the entirety of The Chimes by Charles Dickens for the first class (pages 85-162 in the Oxford Classics edition)

What to expect from this reading group: This will be a fun, engaging discussion that skews less toward lecture and more toward participant-driven and seminar-style discourse.

Reading List:

A Christmas Carol (and Other Christmas Books) by Charles Dickens

Led by

Amanda Hollander

Amanda Hollander

A writer and opera librettist, Amanda Hollander holds a doctorate in Victorian and children’s literature from UCLA. She recently completed a fellowship with the American Opera Project. She has published several works of speculative short fiction and academic articles and was a 2024 fellow at the Huntington Library. You can find more about her upcoming projects at amandahollander.com.

About this series

Reading Groups

Whether you’re looking to catch up on great novels or you’re interested in exploring a new writer or literary period, our reading groups offer high-level literary discussion led by experts in the field.

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