![]() But Dickens’ main intention was, in his own words, to create a ‘kind of whimsical masque which the good-humour of the season justified, to awaken some loving and forbearing thoughts’. This is Dickens in miniature, containing all the pathos, wonder and imagination of his longer novels, as well as the best-loved hallmarks of the ghost-story tradition: clanging chains, hooded figures and creeping terror. This classic Christmas story, a long beloved feature of the festive season, is now synonymous with the holiday itself. Faced with the lost opportunities of his own past, the cold loneliness of his present, and the terrible future that awaits him, Scrooge is transformed. When the cruel and hard-hearted Ebenezer Scrooge retires to his bed on Christmas Eve, he is visited by three spirits the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Christmas Present and Christmas Yet To Come. And nowhere was his vision more ebulliently immortalised than in A Christmas Carol. His was a vision of sizzling geese with the stuffing falling out, puddings like cannonballs blazing with brandy, bowls of punch, hoards of children and Dickens himself in the role of storyteller. “It is required of every man,” the ghost returned, “that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far and wide and, if that spirit goes not forth in life, it is condemned to do so after death.There is nothing more Dickensian than the Dickens Christmas. He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world.ĭickens seems to be reminding us of the importance in taking notice of the lives of those around us. ![]() Scrooge is a miser who shows a decided lack of concern for the rest of mankind. However after a ghostly night, Scrooge sees life in a whole new way. ![]() ![]() “Every idiot who goes about with ‘Merry Christmas’ on his lips, should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart.” to the man who “knew how to keep Christmas well” Scrooge’s transformation is legendary. At the beginning of the story he’s a greedy, selfish person. And although I know and am as sure as it is possible for one to be of anything which has not happened that in the prodigious misery and ignorance of the swarming masses of mankind in England, the seeds of its certain ruin are sown. I have very seldom seen, in all the strange and dreadful things I have seen in London and elsewhere anything so shocking as the dire neglect of soul and body exhibited in these children. In a letter to his friend, Miss Coutts, he described what he saw at the school: In September of 1843 Dickens visited the Field Lane Ragged School. The movement got its name from the way the children attending the school were dressed. They often wore tattered or ragged clothing. The schools provided free education for children in the inner-city. At the time that he wrote A Christmas Carol he was very concerned with impoverished children who turned to crime and delinquency in order to survive.ĭickens, as well as others, thought that education could provide a way to a better life for these children. The Ragged School movement put these ideas into action. This girl is Want.”ĭickens was involved in charities and social issues throughout his entire life. The book is as popular today as it was over 175 years ago. Charles Dickens, through the voice of Scrooge, continues to urge us to honor Christmas in our hearts and try to keep it all the year round. Sadly, A Christmas Carol wasn’t the moneymaker that Dickens hoped it would be. Sales were good, but the publication costs had been high. There were issues with the color of the endpapers, the title page and the book binding.Ī Christmas Carol was the most successful book of the 1843 holiday season. By Christmas it sold six thousand copies and it continued to be popular into the new year. Since Dickens was paying for the publishing of the book, he wanted the book done his way. Chapman & Hall would be paid for the printing costs and receive a fixed commission on the number of copies sold. As a result, they proposed that A Christmas Carol be issued in an inexpensive collection of Dickens’s works or possibly as part of a new magazine.ĭickens was adamant that A Christmas Carol be published as a high-quality, stand-alone book.Īfter a discussion between the parties, they came to an unusual agreement.ĭickens would fund the publication of A Christmas Carol. The owners of the company began to lose faith in the marketability of Dickens’s work. Sales of Martin Chuzzlewit, also published by Chapman & Hall, had been much less than expected. ![]() However, in an interesting turn of events, Dickens paid the publishing costs himself. Technically speaking, A Christmas Carol was published by Chapman & Hall. ![]()
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