Christmas Past

Thomas Ruys Smith, professor of American literature and culture at the University of East Anglia, is the author or editor of several books, including Deep Water: The Mississippi River in the Age of Mark Twain.

An eclectic and engrossing group of Christmas tales, vignettes, and reflections from America's deep nineteenth-century literary well. . . . There is something for everybody in this collection.-- "Robert E. May, author of "Yuletide in Dixie: Slavery, Christmas, and Southern Memory"" An important contribution to the story of the American Christmas. Smith casts a wider net to include new and different voices from those most often contained in Christmas anthologies.-- "Tara Moore, author of "Victorian Christmas in Print"" Christmas Past is an invaluable contribution to not just to the study of Christmas stories but to the history of nineteenth-century American literature.-- "Gerry Bowler, author of "The World Encyclopedia of Christmas" and "Santa Claus: A Biography"" Christmas Past, with its lucid introduction, is a lovely and broad-ranging collection of nineteenth-century Christmas stories that ably illuminates the ways in which literary imaginations inspired and guided the creation of the 'old-fashioned' American Christmas.-- "Penne L. Restad, author of "Christmas in America: A History"" Everyone believes that their own Christmas traditions are the 'real' ones, the ones that others can only palely imitate. Now, with Thomas Ruys Smith's Christmas Past, we can see that all Christmases are a series of overlapping circles of customs, beliefs, habits and stories. A work of scholarship, and also intensive poetry, Christmas Past gives us our own pasts back, and opens a path to exploring new futures.-- "Judith Flanders, author of "Christmas: A Biography""