AustLit

A ruined businessman is saved from suicide by his children at Christmas. (PB)

A poor married couple trust in God and are charitable though they fear they cannot fill their own children's stockings. Generosity meets generosity. Warm though very slight and sentimental. (PB)

A coachman reforms his drinking habits and stays away from his wife for four years until he feels certain of his strength because of a sharp dressing-down from the young mistress who assisted them to marry. Servant romance fostered by the mistress, narrated by the housekeeper. Some moralising but tempered by light tone. Suggests that no one may separate man and wife but conflict, in that someone does and it assists them. (PB)

Tragedy set in Melbourne and country Victoria at Christmas 1879. Clemence Darwin invites the broodingly unhappy friend of her German youth in Bonn, Ingurtha Kaufman, to visit her for Christmas. Ingurtha's gloomy predictions of her visit come true as Clemence's daughter drowns on the eve of her wedding, just as Ingurtha's son had done years before. Omen-filled tale of grief at Christmas; curious dream-like element in parts, eg: the daughter dreams of Ingurtha's dead son lying drowned in the lagoon. (PB)

A boy dies on Christmas Eve and a dying mother, refused alms by a comfortable Church minister etc., leaves her child on the doorstep of the bereaved parents. Pathos. (PB)

A small American craft captures a large British sloop of war - a schooner - up the Demerara River in British Guiana in 1812 - on Christmas Eve. Action tale, well-written of the genre; first-person narrative following a brief introduction. (PB)

A dream narrative of nonsensical and bizarre connections of a new arrival in Melbourne; set in an astronomer's observatory. Overblown with very slight appeal of nonsense. (PB)

Set in Hartford, the tale of a poor foreigner who becomes a boarder with Mrs Pixley and her family. He cherishes a special affection for little six year-old Lina, selling his coat to buy her a sled one Christmas. The next morning his suicide is discovered and a letter telling of the murder of his fiancée by her mad brother on the eve of their wedding. Stretched thin but with a certain force. (PB)

A poor little girl in London is given fairy seeds of love, perserverance etc that bear fruit. Moral tale: they are available to all children. Small appeal; overladen by moral. (PB)

Tale of Christmas past, when the narrator received an unexpected visitor into his solitary house. The visitor, helping himself to whisky, explains he is the Angel Gabriel on a mission of death. Only the narrator's quick thinking and some morphine - laced bourbon - saves him ... Light, entertaining. (PB)

Love miscarries the first Christmas when an intefering aunt intercepts his violets; a year of broken hearts, she nearly dying at home, he believed lost in the Arctic, and they are reunited ... Sentimental, poorly realised tale. (PB)

Two boys are frustrated in their attempt to steal the deacon's prize Christmas turkey. Slight. (PB)

Uneven, oddly paced romance of an opera singer and her lover separated by a quarrel but reunited years later through her adoption of his child. Sub-plot involving her Irish maid and an Irish member of the orchestra who has to save £100 to marry her. Poorly realised with some humour. (PB)

A baby's narrative of how it ruined Christmas for the family because it was considered too young to join in. Humour - engaging. (PB)

A journalist tells two fellow writers of a railway trip to Virginia City on Christmas Eve when he thought he was preventing a murder - but the victim turned out to be a doll. Light. (PB)

A family return from India to spend Christmas with their grandmother in Yorkshire. The narrator three times sees a ghost which forebodes the grandmother's death. Slight; some promise. (PB)

A lawyer is called to a friend's plantation in Virginia to solve the case of Louisa Waring who several years before, on the eve of her wedding, witnessed a murder and refused to marry. Her continued refusal to see the groom she clearly still love is mysteriously ... (PB)

An Irish farmer complains of the problems caused by the bees given him by the new English landlord. Humour. (PB)

On the celebration of Chrismas in Europe. Santa Claus etc. (PB)