The Christmas Box

I haven't been able to find any Christmas stories in Ainsworth's novels (though perhaps a more assiduous scholar may be able to correct me). However, he did publish a short-lived journal entitled The Christmas Box, an annual, which ran to two editions, in 1828-9. The first was notable in that Ainsworth was able to persuade Walter Scott to contribute a ballad, The Bonnets of Bonnie Dundee, and Charles Lamb provided Verses written in the first leaf of Lucy Barton's Album. Other writers (including Theodore Hook, John Gibson Lockhart and William Maginn) furnished the remainder of the stories, and Ainsworth himself added a new tale: The Fairy and the Peach Tree.

The precocious young publisher insisted on paying Scott twenty guineas for Bonnie Dundee, which the revered author accepted with a smile, and handed over to his little granddaughter, Charlotte Lockhart.

In February, 1828, Ainsworth claimed, in a letter to his friend James Crossley: 'The Christmas Box sells admirably; we have already exceeded 2000.' The next volume, in 1829, was published by John Ebers (Ainsworth's father-in-law) and was the final appearance of this title, copies of which are now very scarce.

For more information on The Christmas Box, see S. M. Ellis, William Harrison Ainsworth and his Friends(London, John Lane, 1911), vol. 1, pp. 168-172.