As we leave the Cratchit family for a bot, we continue to select the members of our "A Christmas Carol" All-Star Team from the Christmas Present sequence.
Next we comes across the wife of Fred, Scrooge's nephew.
It's interesting that Fred never calls her by her first name, so we have no idea what it is! We don't even know her last name, as we never hear Fred's last name.
As with Mrs. Cratchit, various versions will sometimes assign her a first name, but it's just not present in the book. Sometimes she's even presented as Fred's fiancée, but in some form or another she's usually present.
A presentation of her that I like a lot is this lovely illustration by Frederick Simpson Coburn from a 1900 edition:
In the book she's presented as a very appealing character who's a good match for Fred and this image captures that certain something!
We catch a glimpse of glimpse of her in two other illustrations from that edition:
She's my pick!
