Posted on 12/21/2023 3:20:02 PM PST by nickcarraway
To hear Philip Palmer, the literary curator at the Morgan Library & Museum tell it, the story behind the writing of "A Christmas Carol" sounds, well, like something out of Charles Dickens.
It is October 1843 and Dickens’ debts are mounting. The 31-year-old author has moved his growing family into a new home in London, a bigger house with more servants. His father and his brothers keep taking out loans using his famous name. He is forced to take out ads in newspapers warning creditors not to loan his father any more money.
By 1843, Dickens was already known for “The Pickwick Papers," “Oliver Twist,” “Nicholas Nickleby,” and “The Old Curiosity Shop.” But his latest work, “The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit,” serialized in magazines, isn’t the barn-burner he’d hoped.
He devises what he calls “a little scheme” to right his financial ship and earn him what he hopes will be £1,000. He’ll write a ghost story for Christmas. But he’ll have to work fast. It’s nearly Halloween. He cancels social engagements, instead seeking inspiration on long nighttime walks through London. Walking by night, writing by day, the novella emerges. In just six weeks, Dickens crafts the story of Ebenezer Scrooge, a “covetous old sinner” who is visited on Christmas Eve by the ghost of his seven-years-dead partner Jacob Marley.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
I know it’s Christmas, but I have to say that my favorite Dicken movie is “Tale of Two Cities”. Very well done and moving.
The 1935 version?
Yes, the 1835 version with Ronald Coleman and Edna May Oliver who was wonderful in that movie.
What the heck, make it a Christmas movie. The Lord is all around the story especially at the end.
Bookmark
I enjoy his novels, but Dickens was a philanderer. Dumped his wife and kids for a younger woman.
I read Martin Chuzzlewit, and it is VERY under-rated. From it we get the word Pecksniffian. Other favorites are Bleak House, Tale of Two Cities and Nicholas Nickleby.
Good movie: “The Man Who Invented Christmas”
I kept waiting for it to tell me how he fared financially later in life.
Everyone who likes Charles Dickens should read Chapter 6 of A Handful of Dust, by Evelyn Waugh. It was also published in an Alfred Hitchcock collection as a short story called “The Man Who Loved Dickens”. I won’t spoil it, but I always think of that story when the subject turns to Dickens.
Was Halloween observed in England in the 1840's?
Washington, Dickens blasted in American Notes, was the home of: “Despicable trickery at elections; under-handed tamperings with public officers; and cowardly attacks upon opponents, with scurrilous newspapers for shields, and hired pens for daggers”.
Nice thread crap! Well done.
Alister Sim was one of the best Scrooges.
“I know it’s Christmas, but I have to say that my favorite Dicken movie is “Tale of Two Cities”. Very well done and moving.”
I remember. I had lasagna.
Did you see the Reginald Owen one?
Indeed? And here I always thought Jesus was somehow central to Christmas. Which brings me to my greatest objection to Dicken's tale. It never mentions Christ. Instead it is one of the great influences on secularizing the story; and turning it into a vague fable of feel good humanistic brotherhood. I'll pass, thank you.
I had all his works at one time...old small leather books....illustrated.
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