Bookishly’s £70 Book Advent Calendar wraps 12 classics, from Emma to A Christmas Carol

Bookishly has published the line-up for its 2026 Book Advent Calendar, and it is a classic reader’s dozen. The calendar costs £70 for 12 gift-wrapped books, each a paperback classic in one of Bookishly’s own designed dust jackets. On 9 November 2026, it was in stock, with shipping due to start on 14 November.

That works out at about £5.83 a book.

What is in the Bookishly Book Advent Calendar 2026?

Bookishly lists these 12 planned titles on its 2026 spoilers page:

• Emma by Jane Austen
• Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
• A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
• Lady Audley’s Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon
• Life’s Little Ironies by Thomas Hardy
• The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
• Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
• Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
• The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
• Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome
• The Time Machine by H. G. Wells
• A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

The brand warns there is a small chance of minor changes if a title runs out, and it cannot change individual sets.

How the calendar works

• 12 numbered parcels: each book is individually wrapped in Bookishly’s pink and red paper and numbered 1 to 12.
• Bookishly Editions: paperback Wordsworth Classics wrapped in dust jackets designed in-house and printed on silk paper.
• Limited stock: the product page says these “always sell out quickly”.
• Shipping: from 14 November, in time for 1 December. The site advertises free UK shipping on orders over £15.

It is a 12-day calendar, not 24, so it suits a “12 days before Christmas” countdown or a book a week through December.

Check before you buy if you subscribe

Bookishly also runs the Classic of the Month Club, a book subscription from £15 a month with tea or coffee. The product page warns that subscribers may already have some of these titles, so check the list above against your shelf. See our Bookishly profile above for the subscription, or the Classic of the Month Club page.

Our take

This is one of the more grown-up advent calendars of the year: no plastic, no filler, just twelve real books. The list mixes the obvious crowd-pleasers, Emma, The Secret Garden and A Christmas Carol, with less common picks like Lady Audley’s Secret and Life’s Little Ironies. If the recipient already owns a well-stocked classics shelf, the duplicates are the risk. Otherwise, at under £6 a book with the wrapping done for you, it is a lovely gift.

See the Bookishly Book Advent Calendar