ABSTRACT
William Thackeray's Christmas tales may not yet have been retold on the cinema screen, but he was nonetheless one of the most influential figures to shape the literary Victorian Christmas. Thackeray had been reviewing festive print since 1837. Thackeray's Christmas book reviews, aside from their comic charm, provide a useful starting point in understanding what he admired in a good Christmas book. As Thackeray's review indicates, by the late 1840s the Christmas genre had apparently been exhausted by many minor writers of the period, who were frequently using Christmas fairy tales as a vehicle for moral teaching. In both his Christmas reading and writing, Thackeray sought to recreate the thrill of the much-loved festive pantomime. In the same episode, Thackeray incorporates other references to the comic fairy tale time of The Rose and the Ring, situating the story within fantastic temporal dimensions while simultaneously creating a farcical form of comedy.
