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A Christmas Carol

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A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens is one of the most beloved works of 19th-century literature, and the story's enormous popularity helped make Christmas a major holiday in Victorian Britain.

When Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol in late 1843, he had ambitious purposes in mind, yet he could never have imagined the profound impact his story would have.

Dickens had already achieved great fame. Yet his most recent novel was not selling well, and Dickens feared his success had peaked. Indeed, he faced some serious financial problems as Christmas 1843 approached.

And beyond his own worries, Dickens was keenly attuned to the profound misery of the working poor in England.

A visit to the grimy industrial city of Manchester motivated him to tell the story of a greedy businessman, Ebenezer Scrooge, who would be transformed by the Christmas spirit.

Dickens rushed A Christmas Carol into print by Christmas 1843, and it became a phenomenon:

The book was immediately popular with the reading public and it is perhaps the most famous work of literature associated with Christmas.

It helped elevate the popularity of Christmas in the 19th century, which was not yet the major holiday we know.

Dickens intended the story as a strong condemnation of greed, and the transformation of Scrooge provided an optimistic message that proved popular.

The story of A Christmas Carol established the idea of Christmas charity toward those less fortunate.

Ebenezer Scrooge became one of the most famous characters in literature.

Dickens himself became associated with Christmas in the public mind.

"A Christmas Carol" was transformed into stage plays, and later films and television productions.

Dickens had first achieved popularity with the reading public with his first novel, The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, which appeared in serialized form from mid-1836 to late 1837. Known today as The Pickwick Papers, the novel was filled with comic characters the British public found charming.

In the following years Dickens wrote more novels:

Dickens had achieved literary superstar status with The Old Curiosity Shop, as readers on both sides of the Atlantic became obsessed with the character of Little Nell.

An enduring legend is that New Yorkers eager for the next installment of the novel would stand on the dock and yell out to passengers on incoming British packet liners, asking if Little Nell was still alive.

Preceded by his fame, Dickens visited America for several months in 1842. He didn't enjoy his visit very much, and the negative observations he put into a book he wrote about it, "American Notes," tended to alienate many American fans. Dickens had been offended by American manners (or lack thereof), and his visit had been restricted to the North, as he was so offended by slavery that he wouldn't venture into the South beyond a foray into Virginia.

In America he paid attention to working conditions, visiting some mills and factories. In New York City he exhibited his keen interest in the poorer classes by visiting the Five Points, a notorious slum neighborhood.

Back in England, he began writing a new novel, Martin Chuzzlewit. Despite his earlier success, Dickens found himself actually owing money to his publisher. And his new novel was not selling well as a serial.

Fearful that his career was declining, Dickens desperately wanted to write something that would be very popular with the public.

Beyond his personal reasons for writing A Christmas Carol, Dickens felt a strong need to comment on the enormous gap between the rich and poor in Victorian Britain.

On the night of October 5, 1843, Dickens gave a speech in Manchester, England, at a benefit to raise money for the Manchester Athenaeum, an organization which brought education and culture to the working masses. Dickens, who was 31 at the time, shared the stage with Benjamin Disraeli, a novelist who would later become Britain's prime minister.

Addressing the working-class residents of Manchester affected Dickens deeply. Following his speech he took a long walk, and while thinking of the plight of exploited child workers he conceived the idea for " A Christmas Carol."

Returning to London, Dickens took more walks late at night, and he worked out the story in his head. The miser Ebenezer Scrooge would be visited by the ghost of his former business partner, Marley, and also the Ghosts of Christmases Past, Present, and Yet to Come. Finally seeing the error of his greedy ways, Scrooge would celebrate Christmas and give a raise to the employee he had been exploiting, Bob Cratchit.

Dickens wanted the book to be available by Christmas. He wrote it with astonishing speed, finishing it in six weeks while also continuing to write installments of Martin Chuzzlewit.

When the book appeared, just before Christmas 1843, it was immediately popular with the reading public as well as with critics.

British author William Makepeace Thackeray, who would later rival Dickens as a writer of Victorian novels, wrote that A Christmas Carol was "a national benefit, and to every man or woman who reads it, a personal kindness."

The story of the redemption of Ebenezer Scrooge touched readers deeply, and the message Dickens wanted to convey of concern for those less fortunate struck a deep chord. The Christmas holiday began to be seen as a time for family celebrations and charitable giving.

There is little doubt that Dickens's story, and its widespread popularity, helped Christmas become established as a major holiday in Victorian Britain.

A Christmas Carol has never gone out of print. Beginning in the 1840s, it began to be adapted for the stage, and Dickens himself would perform public readings of it.

On December 10, 1867, The New York Times published a glowing review of a reading of A Christmas Carol Dickens delivered at Steinway Hall in New York City.

"When he came to the introduction of characters and to dialogue," the New York Times reported, "the reading changed to acting, and Mr. Dickens here showed a remarkable and peculiar power. Old Scrooge seemed present; every muscle of his face, and every tone of his harsh and domineering voice revealed his character."

Dickens died in 1870, but of course, A Christmas Carol lived on. Stage plays based on it were produced for decades, and eventually, films and television productions kept the story of Scrooge alive.

Scrooge, described as a "tight-fisted hand at the grindstone" at the beginning of the tale, famously snapped "Bah! Humbug!" at a nephew wishing him a merry Christmas.

Near the end of the story, Dickens wrote of Scrooge: "It was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge."

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Social Protest For Christmas: Why Dickens Wrote "A Christmas Carol"

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Why and how Charles Dickens wrote his classic story "A Christmas Carol," the tale of Ebenezer Scrooge.

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Influence on Christmas

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When Charles Dickens passed away in 1870, a young girl in London asked a question that demonstrated just how strongly Dickens' writings were associated with the holiday season and modern Christmas traditions. She asked, "Mr. Dickens dead? Then will Father Christmas die, too?"

The popularity of the holiday has waxed and waned since its inception. While Christmas celebrations were often elaborate during the Middle Ages, by the Victorian era, enthusiasm was in decline. Some Christian leaders had become skeptical of the pagan traditions that persisted in their religious holiday, and many families lacked the resources to celebrate as they had in years past. When Charles Dickens' novel A Christmas Carol was published, it revived much of the nostalgia and tradition we associate with Christmas today.

During a time when financial hardships were commonplace for many American and British households, A Christmas Carol delivered just the right message to bring families back to a holiday that often becomes a celebration of wealth and consumerism. Charles Dickens reminded his readers that a joyful Christmas morning does not require Ebenezer Scrooge's gold, as much as it needs the heart of the poor Cratchit family.

Dickens likely saw himself in the character of family man Bob Crachit. Like Crachit, Dickens was a husband and father of a large family. His wife was pregnant with their fifth child while he penned the novel, and they were struggling to make ends meet. Dickens previous writings were not earning very much, and their living expenses were too high. He began writing A Christmas Carol as a desperate attempt to earn more money and provide for his family.

While financial gain may have been Dickens' original motivation, he quickly found himself swept away by the story. When describing the writing process, he said he "wept and laughed, and wept again," and he "walked about the black streets of London fifteen or twenty miles many a night when all sober folks had gone to bed." He believed in his work so passionately that, despite his financial situation, he paid for production of the book out of his own pocket after disagreements with his publishers. Hoping to make his work more affordable to the masses, he also lowered its cost to only five shillings.

A Christmas Carol was released during the Christmas season of 1843. Although its high production cost and low selling price did not bring in a lot of profits, it was an immediate success -- and it made a permanent mark on how Christmas is viewed and celebrated in modern times. The vocabulary has crept into today's conversations, with a "Scrooge" being someone who refuses to get in the holiday spirit, and "Tiny Tim" being any innocent in a vulnerable situation. Most importantly, every time this piece of literature is read or displayed on the silver screen, it reminds us of a vision of Christmas that has little to do with displays of wealth, and instead focuses on loved ones and the joy of an act of charity.

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A Christmas Carol: The Influence of Charles Dickens on Christmas Traditions

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Charles Dickens originally undertook 'A Christmas Carol' to feed his family. The book revolutionized the way Victorians celebrated Christmas, and our concept of the holiday remains shaped by Dickens.

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Cozy up and listen!

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Last Christmas, we featured Charles Dickens' hand-edited copy of his beloved 1843 novella A Christmas Carol. He did that hand editing for the purposes of giving public readings, a practice that, in his time, "was considered a desecration of one's art and a lowering of one's dignity." That time, however, has gone, and many of the most prestigious writers alive today take the reading aloud of their own work to the level of art, or at least high entertainment, that Dickens must have suspected one could. Some writers even do a bang-up job of reading other writers' work: modern master storyteller Neil Gaiman gave us a dose of that on Monday when we featured his recitation of Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky" from memory. Today, however, comes the full meal: Gaiman's telling of A Christmas Carol straight from that very Dickens-edited reading copy.

Gaiman read to a full house at the New York Public Library, an institution known for its stimulating events, holiday-themed or otherwise. But he didn't have to hold up the afternoon himself; taking the stage before him, BBC researcher and The Secret Museum author Molly Oldfield talked about her two years spent seeking out fascinating cultural artifacts the world over, including but not limited to the NYPL's own collection of things Dickensian. You can hear both Oldfield and Gaiman in the recording above. But perhaps the greatest gift of all came in the form of the latter's attire for his reading: not only did he go fully Victorian, he even went to the length of replicating the 19th-century literary superstar's own severe hair part and long goatee. And School Library Journal has pictures.

The story really gets started around the 11:25 mark. Gaiman's reading will be added to our list of Free Audio Books. You can find the text of Dickens' classic in our collection, 800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kindle & Other Devices.

via Den of Geek/ BrainPickings
Related Content: A Christmas Carol, A Vintage Radio Broadcast by Orson Welles and Lionel Barrymore (1939) A Christmas Carol Presented in a Thomas Edison Film (1910) Celebrate the 200th Birthday of Charles Dickens with Free Movies, eBooks and Audio Books O Frabjous Day! Neil Gaiman Recites Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky" from Memory Colin Marshall hosts and produces Notebook on Cities and Culture and writes essays on cities, language, Asia, and men's style. He's at work on a book about Los Angeles, A Los Angeles Primer. Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall or on Facebook.

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Hear Neil Gaiman Read A Christmas Carol Just as Dickens Read It

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Last Christmas, we featured Charles Dickens' hand-edited copy of his beloved 1843 novella A Christmas Carol . He did that hand editing for the purposes of giving public readings, a practice that, in his time, "was considered a desecration of one's art and a lowering of one's dignity."

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Cultural impact

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With the 200th birthday of Charles Dickens quickly approaching, and an entire series of events planned, what is the lasting legacy of his work and his causes?

Charles Dickens is one of the most important writers of the 19th Century. But his influence goes far beyond just literature. Many of his phrases, characters and ideas have engrained themselves in modern culture.

Two centuries on, what are the things still seen today that Dickens first offered us in his writing?

A white Christmas

Modern commentators have described Dickens as "the man who invented Christmas". Not obviously the religious festival, but the wider popular culture phenomenon that surrounds it.

In the early 19th Century, Christmas had become "scarcely worth a mention", according to critic and writer Leigh Hunt.

As an example, the committee of the Carlton Club, which ran the Conservative Party at the time, arranged ordinary business meetings on Christmas Day itself.

While Prince Albert is often credited with the revival of Christmas and the introduction of the Christmas tree, many believe that Dickens's popular depictions of the festive period became a blueprint for generations to come.

Specifically, the idea of a white Christmas - which was and still remains a relatively uncommon occurrence in much of the UK - appears in A Christmas Carol as if it happened each and every year.

In his biography of Dickens, Peter Ackroyd wrote: "In view of the fact that Dickens can be said to have almost singlehandedly created the modern idea of Christmas, it is interesting to note that in fact during the first eight years of his life there was a white Christmas every year; so sometimes reality does actually exist before the idealised image."

Writer and renowned Dickens expert GK Chesterton perhaps best summed up how the great author's romantic view of Christmas has permeated throughout the world.

"Whether the Christmas visions would or would not convert Scrooge, they convert us," he wrote.

One of the things Dickens cared about most was those at the bottom. He was one of the first to offer an unflinching look at the underclass and the poverty stricken in Victorian London.

And this was an area in which he had some experience.

His father had little skill in financial management and this eventually put him and all of his family in a debtors' prison for six months.

The young Dickens worked in a cousin's shop, pasting labels on blacking bottles for six shillings a week.

After he became famous, Dickens helped popularise the term "red tape" to describe the bureaucracy in positions of power that particularly hurt the weak and poor.

"Dickensian" has now become the easiest word to describe an unacceptable level of poverty.

In 2009, when president of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers wanted to talk about the deprivation in some areas, it was not described as terrible or horrific but as "life mirroring the times of Dickens".

This less than perfect England was described by other authors like Benjamin Disraeli and Mrs Gaskell but it is Dickens's view that has really resonated through the ages.

Dickens's live readings were said to be filled with humour and performance, with Dickens himself taking on the accents and mannerisms of the characters he was portraying.

And it is the way the characters speak that often brings a smile from the reader.

"Quite a lot of the time, if you were simply to describe the plot situation of one of the set pieces that you find very funny, it's not very funny at all," says Prof John Mullan, of University College London.

"But it is very funny. The extraordinary thing he does introduce to the novel is the comic potential of the way people talk."

And some in the industry think that Dickens has done even more for the current crop of comedians.

"We're put off by this notion we have of Charles Dickens as this great Victorian novelist because it implies that he's serious," says writer and comedian Armando Iannucci.

"In fact, I think he's the finest comedian we've ever produced. Much comedy today is conditioned by the way Dickens wrote it in the 19th Century and comedy writers today owe a huge debt to him.

"It's that sense of the rhythms, the colloquialisms and the way we speak. In reality, we don't finish our sentences and we all interrupt each other."

While everyone from Gwyneth Paltrow to Miss Piggy has taken a role in a film adaptation of Dickens's work, many argue that he was as instrumental in creating the conventions of cinema as he was for inspiring the content itself.

Russian film director and theorist Sergei Eisenstein said that important aspects of cinema were created by the influence of Dickens on pioneering film director DW Griffith.

He argued that Dickens invented, among other things, the parallel montage - where two stories run alongside each other - and the close-up.

"The idea that Dickens invented cinema is obviously nonsensical but he was a key and important influence in its development," says Prof Graeme Smith, who wrote Dickens and the Dream of Cinema.

"Once film arrived, his work inspired an extraordinary amount of early cinema."

The BFI says that there were around 100 versions of Dickens's work recreated in film in the silent era alone. And those adaptations continue to this day.

This is in large part because of the visual way Dickens wrote, creating painstaking depictions of places.

Prof Theodore Hovet, of Western Kentucky University, has argued that Dickens's influence stretches further than just adaptations in modern cinema, actually providing themes and techniques that are still used today.

For example, he says, the film Dirty Pretty Things' depiction of London pays "homage to a model established by Dickens's compulsive wanderings of the city".

The development of the characters in Dickens is often heralded as one of his greatest achievements.

The Dictionary of British Literary Characters lists 989 named characters in his work, including everyone from Pickwick Papers' Arabella Allen right through to Our Mutual Friend's Eugene Wrayburn.

While characters in many novels before had used symbolic names, what Dickens did differently was refine the practice to suggest character traits and their role.

Some are obvious - Mr M'Choakumchild, the teacher in Hard Times, or ambitious lawyer CJ Stryver in The Tale of Two Cities - but others are less so.

In Great Expectations, Magwitch has a number of different interpretations - from a magpie representing theft to Magi, a Biblical reference to the wise men.

This technique has since been used by everyone from James Joyce and Thomas Pynchon to F Scott Fitzgerald and Martin Amis.

A couple of the most famous characters have become so recognisable that they have entered the language as nouns - somebody mean-spirited or lacking generosity being described as a Scrooge, for example.

But one phrase that does not come from a name is "What the dickens?"

Rather than coming from the author, it is believed to be a slang term for the devil and though its actual origins are unknown, it first appeared prominently in Shakespeare's Merry Wives of Windsor, over 200 years before Dickens was born.

Bleak House, taking place as it does in the Court of Chancery before legal reforms in 1870, is a thinly veiled attack on the judicial system of the time. The current view of lawyers - less than a quarter of people in the UK trust them - seems to be at least partly inspired by characters such as the novel's Mr Tulkinghorn.

"No two books outside the bounds of technical law are more worth reading for law students than Pickwick Papers and Bleak House," Zechariah Chafee Jr once wrote in the Harvard Law Review.

"Even a trained trial lawyer, however, is puzzled by some of the legal points brought up by Dickens, because they have fortunately passed forever out of the realm of living law."

Legal historian Sir William Holdsworth noted the importance of Dickensian record in a lecture given in 1927.

"The treatment by Dickens of various aspects of the law and the lawyers of his day is a very valuable addition to our authorities," he said.

"Not only for that period, but also for earlier periods in our legal history."

But how much do the issues that Dickens highlighted still remain today?

"Central to it, actually, is something that remains a problem," says senior barrister Anthony Arlidge QC.

"Very often, particularly with small civil claims, the cost of the legal proceedings is bound to exceed the damages that are obtained."

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Charles Dickens: Six things he gave the modern world

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With the 200th birthday of Charles Dickens quickly approaching, what is the lasting legacy of his work?

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His best books!

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Considered the greatest novelist to come out of the Victorian era, Charles Dickens has gone down in history as being an essential part of the Western literary canon. His books are always witty, at times humorous and at times dark, and reveal societal truths. Dickens' work provides social commentary, touching on issues including child labor, the class system, the French Revolution, the English legal system, religion, and more. Here are six of Dickens' must-read books.

Great Expectations

Perhaps Dickens' most famous novel, Great Expectations is a quintessential bildungsroman, chronicling protagonist Pip's journey to adulthood and the personal growth he experiences along the way. As Pip travels from being an orphan with no status, to becoming a gentleman, and finally to finding true happiness, he learns many lessons about love and wealth and poverty and generosity along the way. With a supporting cast of lively characters including the eccentric Miss Havisham and her beautiful ward Estella, Magwitch, an escaped convict with a heart of gold, and Joe, Pip's brother-in-law, who is an illiterate but immensely kindhearted blacksmith. Dickens makes many interesting points about social strata, classism, the industrial revolution, and conflicts of morality, making Great Expectations one of the most celebrated books in the Western canon.

A Tale of Two Cities

Set between London and Paris at the time of the French Revolution, A Tale of Two Cities is a biting commentary on the parallels between the events in France and life in London provided through the lives of several characters - primarily Dr Marnette and his daughter Lucie, barrister Sydney Carton, nobleman Charles Darnay, and revolutionaries Monsieur and Madame Defarge. The novel is a rarity amongst Dickens' works in that it is one of his only pieces of historical fiction, and it is perhaps the darkest of his books, making it a unique and important part of Dickens' body of work.

Bleak House

Bleak House is often regarded as the most complex of Dickens' novels, and many would say his finest. Told in part by an omniscient narrator and in part by the protagonist, Esther Summerson, the plot revolves around a long-running legal case entitled Jarndyce vs Jarndyce. Dickens based the story on many of his own experiences as both a law clerk and as a litigant, and though the novel's portrayal of the British legal system was criticized as hyperbolic at the time of Bleak House 's publication, it was influential in catalyzing legal reform in the 1870s. For anyone who enjoyed the Peabody Award-winning 2005 TV adaptation of the book, made by the BBC, the novel is a must-read.

The Adventures of Oliver Twist

Seminal for its unfiltered portrayal of the harsh treatment which orphans faced in England at the time, Oliver Twist is the story of the titular young orphan: his childhood in a workhouse, his subsequent apprenticeship with an undertaker, his escape to London, and finally his acquaintance with the Artful Dodger and the ring of adolescent pickpockets of which the Dodger is a part. The novel serves as an effective social commentary, making clear Dickens' feelings about child labor.

A Christmas Carol

Though it is a novella, measuring up to only 80-odd pages, A Christmas Carol has been hugely influential in revitalizing England's Christmas traditions and overall attitude to the holiday. Dickens' sympathy for the poor and underprivileged is evident again in this book, as are Dickens' own memories of his childhood. The story follows Ebenezer Scrooge, a spiteful old man lacking in Christmas spirit, as he is visited by four ghosts- the ghost of his former business partner and the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Yet to Come- who guide Scrooge through remembrances of years gone by and help him to become more kindhearted and to join in the positive spirit of Christmas. A Christmas Carol is a must-read around the holiday season, or at the very least in order to understand the origin of the common phrase, 'Bah, humbug!'

David Copperfield

The most autobiographical of all of Dickens' works, David Copperfield tells the story of the titular protagonist from his childhood through to adulthood as he navigates his mother's remarriage, boarding school, the death of his mother, various living situations, and ultimately, him finding true love. Dickens wrote in the preface of one edition that 'like many fond parents, I have in my heart of hearts a favourite child. And his name is David Copperfield'. To get a sense of Dickens' feelings about his own life, and to read the book of his which he liked the best, David Copperfield is crucial.

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The Best Books by Charles Dickens You Should Read

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Discover the top six seminal works by Charles Dickens, one of the greatest novelists in history.

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His life

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Charles Dickens was born in 1812 and died in 1870. He wrote classic novels of the Victorian era like Great Expectations, David Copperfield, Oliver Twist and A Christmas Carol.

The Life of Charles Dickens

See our list of articles about the life of Charles Dickens. Read a biography or view a timeline of his life. Learn about his first love and his marriage. Discover how Charles Dickens had a brush with death in a railway accident in 1865.
Featured Article - Charles Dickens Biography
The work of Charles Dickens (1812 - 1870) Includes A Christmas Carol, Oliver Twist, and Great Expectations. This short biography tells about his work and little-known aspects of his life.

For example, in June of 1837 something happened that only occurred once in Dickens's career. He missed a deadline. He was writing two serialized novels at once, The Pickwick Papers and Oliver Twist. However in June of 1837, there was no Pickwick. There was no Oliver Twist. Instead there was a funeral.

Why?

Dickens's sister-in-law, Mary Hogarth was living with Charles and his wife. Mary was a favorite with the couple and was like a little sister to Charles. On the evening of May 6th Mary went with the couple to the St. James Theatre. Everything seemed fine. The group returned late in the evening and Mary retired for the night. Shortly after that Dickens heard a cry from Mary's room. She was ill. Despite her doctor's care Mary passed away in Dickens's arms the next day.

Dickens would relive this sad incident in his life while writing The Old Curiosity Shop. He was traumatized by the death of Little Nell in that novel. Dickens wrote to a friend about Little Nell's death, "Old wounds bleed afresh when I think of this sad story."
Learn more about the Life of Charles Dickens
The Work of Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens wrote fifteen novels. He also wrote short stories, essays, articles and novellas.

Learn about all aspects of Dickens's work including articles on each of his novels. Discover how Dickens got his pen name, Boz. Also, get some pointers in case you think you may have a valuable copy of one of Dickens's works in your attic.

Featured Article - Great Expectations

As a child, Charles Dickens wanted to an education and to become a gentleman. The odds were not in his favor as his family constantly struggled with finances

Pip, like Dickens himself, dreams of becoming a gentleman.

However, during the novel, Pip comes to realize that there is more to life than wealth and station.

A Christmas Carol

A Christmas Carol, arguably the most popular piece of fiction that Dickens ever wrote, was published in 1843. We've got a special page devoted to A Christmas Carol. Once there you can learn about the novel, ask Scrooge a question, test your knowledge of the novella and more.

Quotes from the Work of Charles Dickens

This site is home to a collection of over 800 sourced Dickens quotations. They're sorted by source and topic. Don't miss the Daily Dose of Dickens, a daily quote from the work of Dickens.
Featured Item - Love Quotes
"Oh, Dolf!" she cried. "I am so happy that you thought so; I am so grateful that you thought so! For I thought that you were common-looking, Dolf; and so you are, my dear, and may you be the commonest of all sights in my eyes, till you close them with your own good hands. I thought that you were small; and so you are, and I'll make much of you because you are, and more of you because I love my husband. I thought that you began to stoop; and so you do, and you shall lean on me, and I'll do all I can to keep you up. I thought there was no air about you; but there is, and it's the air of home, and that's the purest and the best there is, and God bless home once more, and all belonging to it, Dolf!" ~ The Haunted Man

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Charles Dickens Info - The Life and Work of Charles Dickens

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Charles Dickens (1812 - 1870) was an author whose novels include Great Expectations, Oliver Twist and A Christmas Carol. Learn more about his life and work.