The Cricket on the Hearth: A Fairy Tale of Home is a novella by Charles Dickens, published by Bradbury and Evans, and released 20 December 1845. Dickens described the novella as "quiet and domestic ... innocent and pretty." It is subdivided into chapters called "Chirps", similar to the "Quarters" of The Chimes or the "Staves" of A Christmas Carol. It is the third of Dickens's five Christmas books, preceded by A Christmas Carol (1843) and The Chimes (1844), and followed by The Battle of Life (1846) and The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain (1848).
Seventeen stage productions opened during the Christmas season 1845 with one production receiving Dickens's approval and opening on the same day as the book's release. Dickens read the tale four times in public performance. It has been dramatized in numerous languages and for years was more popular on stage than A Christmas Carol. Cricket is less explicitly Christian than some of Dickens's other Christmas books, and it has been criticized for its sentimentality, but contemporary readers were attracted to its depiction of the Victorian ideal of the happy home.
In 1967 an animated version of Cricket on the Hearth premiered on NBC on December 18, as an installment of The Danny Thomas Hour. It can be seen below. It became an instant holiday classic. The novella can be read here.
