The Cricket on the Hearth : A Fairy Tale of Home: With Annotated

The Cricket of Hearth is yet another Christmas novel of Charles Dickens which was published in 1845 by Bradbury and Evans. This novel has had many criticisms yet, was chosen for many plays across Britain and America and was also the basics for at least two operas. This novel relates about a Cricket which constantly chirps sitting on a hearth in garden and acts like a guardian angel to a family.

The story is within a small family. The husband, John Peerybingle who is a carrier and his wife Dot who is very young. They have a son and their nanny lives with them. It is this chirps of this Cricket, which makes them feel the security and sense some danger that comes to the house. One fine day, a mysterious elderly stranger visits this family and takes up lodging with them for a few days.

There is a miser, Mr. Tackleton who lives in the city and a poor toy maker, Caleb Plummer works with him. Plummer has two children; a son named Edward who travels to South America and is never seen again and thought to be dead and a daughter, named Bertha who is blind. Somehow the life of Caleb Plummer and John Peerybingle intersects