Poetry and More

A West Country Christmas, edited by Chris Smith

This is another of Alan Sutton publishing's "Christmas Anthologies," which contain short excerpts of Christmas/Christmastide passages from various British novels, memoirs, and poetry books, with the action taking place in the shire or historical era denoted in the title.

Covering England's "West Country" (Cornwall and Somerset), known for their oft-parodied "z" accents, this particular volume is almost half-filled with poetry from Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Robert Herrick, Christina Rossetti, Charles Kingsley, and others. Contributors of prose include Conan Doyle with an excerpt from Hound of the Baskervilles (although it really had nothing to do with Christmas), Agatha Christie (Poirot celebrates the holidays), Daphne DuMaurier, Blackmore's Lorna Doone, and Thomas Hardy.

The Glastonbury Thorn, the legendary tree that supposedly blooms every year on "the real Christmas" (by the Julian calendar, now January 7), has its own chapter, as does the West Country tradition of mumming. Other memoirs tell of old-fashioned Christmases with simple toys and reveling, there is—of course—a ghost story or two, there's a long chapter with Christmas excerpts from West Country newspapers, and even the amazing story of a shepherd who saves 66 sheep from freezing on a snowy night by carrying them back two by two to a barn. Old engravings, photographs, and advertisements complete this interesting volume.

Everything That's Christmas: Memoirs, Memories, and Ghosts!

A Warwickshire Christmas, edited by David Green
This is another in Alan Sutton publishing's line of Christmas books, either from English shires (their equivalent of a county) or during a certain time or literary period. Having picked up one (Worcestershire Christmas) at a book sale, I've collected one or two at the time when I can find them inexpensively. I've collected all the regional ones now, and this is the third from the last.

The contents of these books are kind of a coin toss. Sometimes it's obvious that there aren't a lot of Christmas writings from the particular shire and they have tossed in winter observances like the weather or references to cold weather or they've included the "St. George and the Dragon" play in its entirety. This volume, however is crammed with memoirs of holiday celebrations from the POV from all walks in life, from Daisy England, a poor child whose father left the family and who eventually ended up in the workhouse, to the Christmases celebrated by Frances, Countess of Warwick. Three contributions are from Ursula Bloom, a prolific writer of 560 books, from childhood memories to ghost stories she was told by a family servant. Vivian Bird recalls a chill, cheerless Christmas in which he was serving in the Army during the Second World War. There are excerpts from Silas Marner, another George Eliot novel Brother Jacob, and two excerpts from Washington Irving's Old Christmas (a part of The Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon), as well as a short account of Christmas at Aston Hall, the prototype for Irving's Bracebridge Hall. There are accounts of meager Christmases in poor homes and bountiful Yuletides at manor homes, and even a fascinating article talking about stagecoaches—you are used to seeing stagecoaches in Western movies with passengers riding inside and the driver and the person "riding shotgun" on the outside, but, on British stagecoaches at least, passengers who paid less actually rode outside.

Plus there are illustrations and many many nostalgic photos of snowy lanes and old-fashioned sights like poultry shops and horse-drawn vehicles. One of the best Sutton Christmas anthologies!

Not Nostalgic Enough

Christmas TV Memories: Nostalgic Holiday Favorites of the Small Screen, Herbie J. Pilato
I've been waiting on this book since I saw it promoted and learned that it had a chapter about The House Without a Christmas Tree, which is one of my very favorites, if not favorite (it changes by year) Christmas movie ever (it alternates with The Homecoming). Now that I've read it, I loved the House chapter and about half of the rest of the book.

I found the rest...kind of annoying. First, the book seems to spend an inordinate amount of time talking about television variety Christmas specials. I realize they're a rara avis these days, and certainly the biggest of them, hosted by Bob Hope, Perry Como, Bing Crosby, Andy Williams, etc., were fabulous and bear examining; I loved it a few years back when MEtv showed a bunch of these gems, including Perry Como's Early American Christmas and Christmas in Paris. It's the one- or two-time specials that seemed out of place, and after the first few chapters they seem all jumbled together.

The remainder of the chapters address animated specials, Christmas television films, and Christmas episodes of series favorites. The quality wavers between detailed examinations of one item (like The House Without a Christmas Tree) to chapters like the one about The Simpsons which basically just lists all the Simpsons Christmas episodes. It would have been better to say there were 21 episodes and mention the first and a couple of notable ones.

Pilato also says, naturally, there wasn't time in 300 pages to mention every Christmas special and every Christmas episode of every series—I was particularly disappointed by the complete omission of all eight Lassie Christmas episodes—yet there is plenty of time, apparently, to mention Thanksgiving episodes and New Year's episodes!—not to mention numerous asides about what star was married to another star who went on to produce fill-in-the-blank famous movie with no connection to Christmas. Not only that, but the subtitle is "nostalgic holiday favorites." Everyone's nostalgic about Rudolph and Frosty and other 60s and 70s animated shows and episodes; who the dickens is nostalgic about some forgettable episode of Reba that's aired ten years ago?

Particularly irritating was the chapter about The Homecoming: A Christmas Story, in which several pages were wasted talking about the dreadful remake they did a couple of years ago which I turned off in disgust after ten minutes when Jason started berating John-Boy about his stupidity in wanting to be a writer! The set decoration looked like it came out of an issue of "Country Living" and makes the Walton family look prosperous instead of just getting by. Ugh! And the chapter about The Gathering devotes two of the four pages to another film the director did called Peege. Huh?

Pilato even gets part of the plot of the memorable episode of That Girl called "Christmas and the Hard Luck Kid" incorrect: Tommy, the little boy Ann Marie is keeping company at Christmas, isn't Jewish; his friend whom he eventually spends Christmas Day with is the one who's Jewish.

I'm keeping this because of The House Without a Christmas Tree chapter, but, really, I wish I'd found it at the library booksale instead of forking over $20+ dollars on it.

Mysteries and Ghosts Make a Good Combination

Mystery for Christmas, edited by Richard Dalby
This is a collection of mystery stories...surprise...set around Christmas, with most of them having a supernatural twist. It begins with the ultimate in ghost story authors, Charles Dickens himself, with "The Black Veil." Several other classic authors are represented, including Thomas Hardy. Some of the stories feature murder, but there are other situations including a kidnapped child, a reluctant church attendee, a mysterious photograph, sudden deaths at a house party, even an unusual meal eaten in Persia and the adventures of a ghost, not to mention a locked-room mystery.

I loved almost every one of these stories; I think my least favorite was the one by Keating. Even the Sherlock Holmes pastiche and the story that's a takeoff on M.R. James and King's College.

There are several of these collections done by Dalby, including Ghosts for Christmas, which I've previously reviewed.

A Christmas at the Lake

The Tuckers: The Cottage Holiday, Jo Mendel
This is the Christmas entry in Mendel's Tuckers series, about a family of five children, stay-at-home-mom, and a dad who runs a variety store with his father. The stories are usually simple, but sometimes humorous, sometimes dramatic situations around family life.

Cottage Holiday revolves around seven-year-old Penny, who's the often-sick member of the family, who's tired of being pampered and longs to discover what she's good at like her talented brothers and sisters. She wishes the whole family could spend Christmas at the family's summer cottage on the lake—and what a surprise to discover that her doctor says she is well enough to go!

The rest of the story involves the kids' adventures on the lake, which includes hiking, hunting a lost calf with some young friends who live on a nearby farm, finding an abandoned baby, and coping with the fact that a renegade cougar is prowling the area.

The main charm of this story is nostalgia: the kids sometimes quarrel, but they love each other as well; their simple adventures encompass positive values without being preachy. This story is particularly charming because Penny, who's usually a background character, comes into her own here. Her baby steps into finding herself gives it an introspective undercurrent that the other books don't have.

A Depression Christmas

Christmas After All: The Great Depression Diary of Minnie Swift, Kathryn Lasky
This is my knock-down favorite "Dear America" book (and believe me, there are good ones and bad ones). I love Kathryn Lasky writing anything, especially her Callista Jacobs mysteries and Prank, and, brought up on my parents' stories about the Depression, this story rings very true.

Minnie Swift, youngest girl and next-to-youngest child in the Swift family, tells the story of "a Christmas of dwindling." Her father, an accountant, is working fewer hours, and the family begins closing off rooms in their house in order to save coal. Then they receive a startling telegram: a young cousin they didn't know existed is coming to live with them: Willie Faye Darling, deep from the Dust Bowl. Willie Faye is the same age as Minnie, but has never seen a movie, doesn't know about comic strips, and is so small people think she is younger.

Yet Willie Faye is the glue that will hold the Swift family together on that "Christmas of dwindling" in which they eat meatless meals, work on home-made Christmas gifts, cope with a tragedy concerning a friend's family, discover some of the sobering things Willie Faye has lived through, and enjoy the antics of Minnie's older and creative sister, "Lady" (short for Adelaide) who loves fashion and Greta Garbo films.

Based on my mom's stories of Depression privations, Minnie's story seems very real. The only false note in the story is the epilog, which I find a bit fanciful.

Happy Christmas from the Clarks!

Sleigh Bells for Windy Foot, Frances Frost

Between 1947 and 1956, Frost, a native of Vermont, wrote a series of children's books about the Clark family, who have a small dairy farm in northern Vermont: parents, three children, Toby, age 12; Betsey, age 9; and Johnny, five and a precocious (and sometimes annoying) poet. In the first book of the series, Windy Foot at the County Fair, Toby, a budding artist, is given a Shetland pony named Windy Foot. He also meets Leticia "Tish" Burnham (who's planning to become a doctor), and the two children become fast friends. Now it's Christmas, Tish and her dad Jerry are coming to visit, and the whole family is full of anticipation.

Plus there's a renegade bear wandering the area and one of the Clark cows is about to birth a late-in-the-year calf.

This is hygge at its purest: simple family doings on a late 1940s independent farm, much hard work, but much fun as well, home-cooking, collecting greens for Christmas decorations, horse-and-buggy and horse-and-sleigh rides, carol singing on the town green, Christmas shopping in the general store...with a few hair-raising adventures thrown in for good measure.

The Clarks are fine folk to spend Christmas with! I do it every year.

The Windy Foot Books

101 Tales...More Like It

Tales of Christmas, edited by Amy Newmark
I almost gave up on the "Chicken Soup for the Soul" annual Christmas volume a couple of years ago, as the stories had begun to get quite repetitive. I was mollified by this year's volume, which starts out at Thanksgiving and contains some humorous and touching "turkey tales."

The book gets off to a rollicking start with a section called "Tales of the Tree," which contains a very funny chapter called "Our Dancing Christmas Tree" (although it wasn't funny if you were the person with the tree). "Oh, But There Was a Creature Stirring" is pretty hilarious, too. There are family stories, Santa tales, uncommon Christmases, family mayhem, quiet miracles, even the story of the autistic boy who couldn't connect with humans but who could with a very special Christmas gift.

There are even two New Year stories to round out the holiday season.

Lots of feel-good tales leading up to the holiday: this would be a good bedtime book in the days leading up to Christmas (and remember that there are twelve days of it!).

Another Unique Sutton Christmas Book

A Staffordshire Christmas, edited by Robin Pearson
I found the first one of these Sutton Christmas anthologies (A Worcestershire Christmas) at a library book sale several years back. After finding A Surrey Christmas at the same book sale, every time I found a book from this series for less than five dollars with postage, I bought one and have managed to accumulate all the regional ones. These contain short excerpts of Christmas/Christmastide passages from various British novels, memoirs, and poetry books, with the action taking place in the shire or historical era denoted in the title.

This title repeats the oft-included "St. George and the Dragon" play cited in many of the other books, but includes some unique passages as well, including two short stories by Arnold Bennett about a frivolous woman named Vera; a long poem called "The First Christmas Eve"; an affecting excerpt from Vera Brittain's World War I classic Testament of Youth and an account of the 1914 "Christmas Truce" in the trenches; accounts of Christmas customs in the late 1800s and early 1900s in poor homes and in a country estate; stories of regional hymns; and more, and many, many pictures of snowy nostalgia from 1900 all the way to the 1980s.

I enjoyed this look at "snowy old England"!

Ending With "Ideals"

Ideals Christmas 2023, from Ideals Publications
What more can I say about these pretty books containing poetry, essays, and artwork/photographs? They are definitely a cozy "go to" during the Christmas season: the nostalgic soft-focus vintage paintings, the still-life items of Christmas decorations, the annual narrative of the Nativity story with appropriate artwork, etc. This issue had an inordinate amount of verse that were Christmas carol words, but it didn't take away from my enjoyment.

One of my favorite poems, "Noel: Christmas Eve, 1913" by Robert Bridges (turned into a song for John Denver so long ago) appears in the volume. I also liked the short but joyful "Christmas" by Marchette Chute.

As always, Pamela Kennedy's essays are a joy; I remember back when she was writing these about her children, and now she's writing them about her grandchildren. The Dickens essay was thoughtful, and also Bennett's history of St. Nicholas.

This is an annual treat. And that's it for this year's Christmas books. I'm still working my way through Flame Tree Press' huge collection of "gothic" Christmas fantasy short stories, mixing vintage offerings like Dickens' "The Goblins Who Stole a Sexton" with modern ones.

On the Eve of Twelfth Night

Christmas in Puerto Rico, from World Book, Inc.

Well, this is it. With this volume, I've finished my collection of World Book's "Christmas Around the World" books, started way back when I came upon at least a dozen of them at the Cobb County Library Sale (and found most of them there later. This one, however, came via online.

It's a colorful volume packed with all the unique celebrations that come from Puerto Rico's mixed heritage of Native forebears, Spanish explorers, and being a commonwealth of the United States, so that Christmas trees, snowmen, and Santa cavort in the tropical sun along with poinsettias, palm trees, and cactus decorated with colored lights, not to mention roosters for the one who supposedly crowed at midnight when Jesus was born. Special foods, like lechon (roast pork) and pasteles, are served, music is heard everywhere played on the unique 10-stringed guitar and unique Puerto Rican carolers fill the streets.

There are pull-outs about Jose Feliciano and "Feliz Navidad," a portrait of a "santero," a carver of saints, and others, and a big section on the big celebration in the country, Three Kings Day on January 6, the feast of the Epiphany.

Christmas As It Was

A Shropshire Christmas, compiled by Lyn Briggs

I found my first volume of the Sutton "Christmas anthologies" (A Worcestershire Christmas, if you care) at a library book sale many years back. When A Surrey Christmas turned up at a subsequent sale I realized this was a series. Every time I found a book from this series, I bought one and have now managed to accumulate all of the regional ones. These contain short excerpts of Christmas/Christmastide passages from various British novels, memoirs, and poetry books, with the action taking place in the shire or historical era denoted in the title.

Like A Hertfordshire Christmas previously reviewed, this one is a bumper issue of old Christmas lore, mostly of Christmas as it was celebrated from 1850 through the 1970s, and little repeated material as in a few of the other books. Shropshire is on the border of England and Wales, and contains such famous cities as Shrewsbury, Telford, Ludlow, and Ellesmere, and several famous writers and artists came from the area, including A.E. Housman, poet; Wilfred Owen, World War I author and poet; and Randolph Caldecott, artist. (The Shire in The Lord of the Rings is reportedly based on Shropshire and Ellis Peters' Brother Cadfael mystery stories are set in Shrewsbury.) Housman, Caldecott, and Cadfael are all represented in this collection, and the famous Dick Whittington, "three times Mayor of London," supposedly was a "Salopian boy." ("Salop" is the ancient name for the Shropshire region.)

But the best bits in this book are just regular reminisces from "regular people": from creeping downstairs to find apples, nuts, an orange, and small toys in your stocking to the windows of the poulterers' shops filled with all sorts of geese, turkeys, and other game to carols born in the Shropshire hills to the story of a servant married (but not living with) a wealthy man obsessed with servants to homely Christmas celebrations in cottagers' huts and middle-class homes.

Is There a Santa Claus?

'Twas the Night Before, Jerry B. Jenkins

Tom Douton is a self-made journalist with a knack of writing cynical stories about the victimized "little people" in life. Noella Wright is an optimistic university journalism instructor. When these two opposites meet, they unexpectedly fall in love. Noella doesn't understand his cynicism, nor does Tom understand her happy outlook to life; they just know they're happy together.

But Tom doesn't know the complete story behind the round pendant Noella wears all the time, one with an incised Christmas tree shape and the words "Forever and..." The only time he asked, she merely said "Santa brought it to me." But the truth is much more complicated than Tom knows, and he doesn't know how to react to it.

He only knows it has made a rift between himself and Noella, so he makes a decision that will change his life.

This was a sweet little book with a twist at the end I didn't expect; it turns very suddenly from a love story between two dissimilar people and becomes something unexpected. However, I thought the writing was a bit...distant. Tom and Noella never really came alive for me, although Tom's adventure at the end was well-written.

Decades of Christmas

A Hertfordshire Christmas, compiled by Margaret Ashby

I found my first volume of the Sutton "Christmas anthologies" (A Worcestershire Christmas, if you care) at a library book sale many years back. When A Surrey Christmas turned up at a subsequent sale I realized this was a series. Every time I found a book from this series, I bought one and have now managed to accumulate all of the regional ones. These contain short excerpts of Christmas/Christmastide passages from various British novels, memoirs, and poetry books, with the action taking place in the shire or historical era denoted in the title.

Some of the books repeat certain things heavily, like the "St. George and the Dragon" skit done door-to-door by the Waits, or excerpts from Dickens, so it was refreshing to find this one, which is pretty much wall-to-wall memoirs from former Hertfordshire writers and residents, and they run the gamut from poulterers' shops in the late 1880s to memories of the cold, cold winter of 1962: from a story about an orphan put out for fostering by an old couple to a Christmas selection by Anthony Trollope, from wartime Christmases during both World Wars to celebrations in school, memories of composer Elizabeth Poston to one from Charles Dickens' great-granddaughter Monica, reports from department stores and ghost stories and bookmobiles, and more.

I really enjoyed this one because of the different decades of memories throughout, and, as always, the reminders of how little it took one hundred years ago to make a small child's Christmas.

Heartwarming Essays and Short Stories

Fifty Years of Christmas. edited by Ruth M. Elmquist

This is a charming vintage book of poetry, short stories, and essays from the "Christian Herald" from 1901 to 1950. Sounds preachy, you think? Well, although many of the essays and some of the stories involved the Nativity, this collection is no didactic, gloomy collection. In fact, one of them is the sweetest love story ("There Was a Star") about a man who has loved a woman all his life, but believes she is in love with his brother.

Dorothy Canfield Fisher talks about traditions in "This Must We Keep." Men in a World War II prisoner of war camp, enemies and friends, come together in "The Hour of Stars." An embittered newspaper owner finds Christmas in "A Good-Willer." Edgar A. Guest's touching poem "On Going Home for Christmas" is followed by his essay "I'm at My Best at Christmas!" which tells how he wrote the verse. "Christmas on Beacon Hill" talks about a candle-lighting custom in Boston which I wonder if is still done. And there are so many more heartwarming ones!

It's nice to go back to time when essays and stories were thoughtfully written for adults, and not just "sound bites" in juvenile-vocabulary-ridden tales from the internet in between intrusive advertisements. I like being treated like an adult.

The Famous History of the Famous Poem

Twas The Night: The Art and History of the Classic Christmas Poem, written and compiled by Pamela McColl
This is a big, beautiful "coffee-table book" published on the 200th anniversary of the writing/publishing of the classic "A Visit from St. Nicholas." It talks at first of the history of the Christmas celebration as well as the history of St. Nicholas, then switches to the history of Santa Claus in New York, a tale that pivots upon Washington Irving, who in his farcial history of the city, declared that St. Nicholas was the patron saint of the city formerly known as New Amsterdam.

Nor was Clement C. Moore the first person who talked about "Santa Claus" or his flying about in the sky. Indeed, there is still contention by the family of Henry Livingston, Jr., that he is the actual author of the poem, but the proof was lost in a house fire. (Author McColl talks about these theories, but believes the author is Moore.)

This is a neat book with a lot of historical information, but the author wanders far afield of the poem itself, quoting historical figures about Christmas celebrations but not necessarily citing Moore's poem. Still, the illustrations, of Santa Claus and of Christmas in general, are gorgeous, with many full page and half page color illustrations of paintings, advertisements, and magazine illustrations. I bought it at fifty percent off; you might want to find a bargain copy.

Romance for Christmas

Lovelight Farms, B.K. Borison

Stella Bloom had a bleak childhood; daughter of a philandering husband, her mother never recovered from being abandoned by her lover; subsequently she grew up learning not to count on people who might abandon you. When her mother died, she accidentally met Luka Peters, a statistician. Luka becomes her best friend, supporting her dreams when she bought a local Christmas tree farm, the one place where she was truly happy. But due to recent setbacks, she's afraid she might lose the farm and is afraid to tell her employees. Instead, she concocts a plan to win a prize with an internet influencer to fund the farm further.

Unfortunately, she told the influencer she and her boyfriend ran the farm. So she asks Luka to be her "temporary boyfriend."

You guessed it, these two "best friends" have been in love all during their ten-year friendship. Luka seems amenable to admitting it, but due to her trust issues Stella thinks its better to leave the status at quo.

This is a sweet Hallmark-type romance taking place in a very accepting small town (no one cares, for example, that the sheriff is hoping to be in a same-sex relationship) and Luka is a very appealing lead male character—he even cooks, and his Italian mom, who appears all too briefly, is a hoot. Stella, however seems to be a perpetual child, frightened of any commitment fearing her life will end up like her mother's (one actually wants to bonk her mom for basically allowing Stella's deadbeat dad to ruin her life). Basically the story is 300 pages of their yearning for each other.

Some good things: the farm manager, Beckett, is a hoot: a tough guy who's a sucker for kittens. Lovelight Farms' Christmas sounds like a dream. No one likes Stella's deadbeat dad. Some bad things: there's yet another best-friend-is-a-dreamy-baker (both in her looks and her baking). The yearning goes on so, so, so long.

The sex scenes are pretty good. A nice Christmas story if you don't expect much.

The Belgian Detective Sees It Through

Hercule Poirot's Christmas, Agatha Christie

Simeon Lee has a fiendish plan for Christmas: invite all his family, including his estranged sons, to a family reunion. Already home caring for him is his stolid son Alfred and his wife Lydia. Visiting will be George (the cheap one) with his spendthrift wife Magdalene, the artistic David and his wife Hilda who hopes seeing his father will destroy his demons, and his granddaughter Pilar (child of his deceased daughter). Also visiting is Stephen Farr, son of his old partner in his diamond mines day. Simone plans to torment his children with talk about changing his will—but before he can plot any further, he's murdered in a welter of blood in...guess what...a locked room.

Luckily Hercule Poirot is staying nearby with his friend Colonel Johnson (and despairing the lack of central heating). They soon determine that, despite what George keeps wittering about "lunatics" entering the house to kill his father, the culprit must be homegrown. But everyone has a reason for hating Simeon Lee, so the suspects are unlimited.

I know Christie's reputation, and this one doesn't disappoint. The guests don't even get a chance to see the Christmas decorations before the dirty deed is done (not that dad doesn't really deserve it). I had several suspects...and never guessed the real one!

Not much Yuletide cheer, but a nice solid mystery.

Scrooge, Pickwick, and Other Fellows

Dickens' Christmas, compiled by John Hudson
This is one of the Sutton Christmas anthologies that is not concentrated on a certain shire, but a certain era, and contains compilations from mostly Charles Dickens' Christmas writings (chiefly A Christmas Carol, but also from his monthly magazine "Household Words"), but also has Dickens' era offerings, including the tale of an ordinary man who got himself assigned to one of the terrible workhouses and revealed the crowded and smelly living conditions and meager meals (at one point he says that a candle dipped in boiling water would probably provide more nutrition than the food that was fed the paupers). There's an excerpt from Washington Irving's "Bracebridge Hall" quintet of stories, the scathing poem "Song of the Shirt" about a poor woman receiving hardly enough money from sewing rich people's garments to feed herself, several other workhouse accounts, a lively account of how to give a children's party, and lots of woodcuts and engravings for the era.

I would say pick this one up at a good library book sale.

Christmas in the Forest of Dean

A Forest Christmas compiled by Humphrey Phelps

Alan Sutton Publishing has a series of these "Christmas anthologies," the first which I bought at a book sale several years ago, and I try to pick up inexpensive copies when I can find them. Most of them concentrate on a certain shire or area in England (there are a handful, like A Dickens Christmas, A Wartime Christmas, and A Bronte Christmas that are set around a historic era instead).

This is one of my favorites, with many reminisces from adults who grew up in the Forest of Dean, and the simple gifts children received back then (at least a dozen stories talk about kids getting "an apple, an orange [very rare back then], a penny, some type of simple candy [not chocolate], and maybe a small toy"). One girl even remembered receiving a doll cradle although she had no doll. Also talk about special years when there was snow, or the family received a special meat to have with dinner. of course stirring the Christmas pudding! There are two excellent verses as well, and some sobering posts about the workhouse.

All illustrated with vintage drawings, maps, placards, photographs, and more.