A Christmas Carol
"No one is useless in this world who lightens the burdens of others."
From the wonderful movie, "The Man Who Invented Christmas" with Dan Morgan and the fantastic Christopher Plumber from Sound of Music fame. The movie recounts the story of how Charles Dickens came to write his most famous story, A Christmas Carol.
Dickens was already established as one of the great novelists of our time with Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, A Tale of Two Cities, and Great Expectations among many other writings. Dickens just returned from a trip to America and was working on his next book Martin Chuzzlewit early in 1943.
A Christmas Carol was written in October 1843 and published in December that same year. After visiting America in 1842, Dickens returned to home to London and was looking for another idea for his next book after some recent efforts failed to achieve the same success as his earlier works. His publishers Chapman & Hall were not excited by a Christmas book and since it was already October they didn't see how they would be able to publish the work in six weeks by Christmas when the book was not even written yet.
Dickens belief in the story of Scrooge and the Ghosts of Christmas was so strong he paid for the illustration and publishing costs himself. He hired the best illustrator in London, John Leech, who struggled drawing a Merry Ghost.
The book was a tremendous success and sold out 6000 copies within in a week. The story continues to be enjoyed today with numerous popular movie versions. My favorite is the is the 1999 version with Patrick Stewart as Scrooge and Ian McNiece as Fezziwig.
And as Tiny Tim says,
"God Bless Us Everyone"
Merry Christmas!
Coach K
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