MobileRead Forums - Short Fiction Various Authors: The Holly-Tree In. v2. 3 May 2015

Charles Dickens' journals Household Words and All the Year Round had Extra Christmas Numbers each each year, and several of these contained stories co-authored by Dickens and staff writers who shared his social activism. Dickens and Wilkie Collins provided the linking text between each chapter. Some of the chapters were published separately in other versions.

The Holly-Tree Inn was the Household Words Extra Christmas Number for 1855, and was co-authored by Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins, well established authors; William Howitt and Holme Lee (Harriet Parr), then well established authors but now rarely read; and Adelaide Anne Procter, Queen Victoria's favourite poet.

In the story a disappointed lover is snowbound in an inn on the road to Gretna Green. He reminisces about the many other inns he has visited, and then various staff members tell him the stories of two eloping children, of a haunted ostler, of migrants to Melbourne, of the unrequited love of a stable boy for a princess, and of a poor pensioner, her son, and a 'golden-headed but tinsel-hearted little coquette.' Then he meets the man he considers his rival.

Other versions of The Ostler's story appeared in The Queen of Hearts and The Frozen Deep and Other Tales by Wilkie Collins.

The source text was plain text from the Dickens Journals Online site, and was checked against the images of the original journal. I have silently corrected typos, and made changes to spelling and hyphenation using oxforddictionaries.com.

Edit: 3 May 2015 Version 2 corrects an embarrassing error in the 'About this ebook' section.