The Cricket on the Hearth. A Fairy Tale of Home is a novella by Charles Dickens, published in December 1845 with illustrations by Daniel Maclise, John Leech, Richard Doyle, Clarkson Stanfield and Edwin Henry Landseer. Like all of Dickens' Christmas books, it was published in book form, not as a serial. Dickens described the novel 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, the others being A Christmas Carol (1843), The Chimes (1844), The Battle of Life (1846), and The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain (1848). (Wikipedia)