Charles Dickens's book "A Christmas Carol" is probably
most famous of all Christmas stories. In preface he wrote:"I have endeavoured in this Ghostly little book, to raise Ghost of an Idea, which shall not put my readers out of humour with themselves, with each other, with season, or with me. May it haunt their houses pleasantly, and no one wish to lay it
Their faithful Friend and Servant, C.D. December 1843."
Charles Dickens - The Man
Charles Dickens (1812-1870) is considered to be one of greatest English novelists of Victorian period. Dickens's works are characterized by attacks on social evils, injustice, and hypocrisy.
Charles John Huffam Dickens, second of seven children of John and Elizabeth Dickens, was born in Landport on 7th February 1812. His father worked as a clerk at Navy pay office in Portsmouth. In 1814 Dickens moved to London, and then to Chatham in 1817, for Dickens, happiest years of his childhood (1817-22) were spent in Chatham, a bustling port on England's southeast coast, where he received some education.
John Dickens had difficulty making ends meet as his family grew. At ten Charles's family moved to Camden Town in London. John Dickens' debts had become so severe that all household goods were sold. Still unable to satisfy his creditors, John Dickens was arrested and sent to Marshalsea Prison. Charles, now twelve, was sent to work at Warren's Blacking Factory, where he was paid six shillings (shilling is equal to 1/20th of a pound) a week wrapping shoeblack bottles to help support his family. Six months after being sent to Marshalsea, one of John Dickens's relatives died. He was left enough money in will to pay off his debts and to leave prison. Charles was allowed to quite job, against his mother's better judgment. This became a sore spot for Charles, that he remembers rest of his life.
Some of inheritance was used to educate Charles at a nearby private school, Wellington House Academy. His schooling was again interrupted and ultimately ended when Dickens was forced to return to work at age 15. He found work as a clerk at firm of Ellis & Blackmore, Charles disliked work but he did enjoy walking streets in evening observing people of London. He then became a shorthand reporter in courts, and finally a parliamentary and newspaper reporter.
Looking back on his own childhood, Dickens saw himself as "a very small and not over-particularly-taken-care-of boy." For as I had spoken before, Dickens's childhood was a mixture of both fond and unhappy memories. His childhood poverty and feelings of abandonment, although unknown to his readers until after his death, would be a heavy influence on Dickens' later views on social reform and world he would create through his fiction.
But even though Dickens family was both large and almost always hard-pressed, Charles Dickens grew into a young man who, through sheer fertility of his creative genius and an astonishing amount of hard work, transformed himself into most famous writer of his age.
In midst of his labors over Martin Chuzzlewit, Dickens found time to write little tale that is unquestionably his most beloved work, "A Christmas Carol". Published on December 17, 1843, this tender fable of spiritual renewal received a rapturous welcome from public. Readers were moved to tears by story of delightfully despicable Scrooge, a heartless old miser who undergoes a miraculous rebirth precisely at Christmas, only time "in long calendar of year, when men and women seem by one consent to open up their hearts freely."
A Christmas Carol - The Book
Millions of readers for over past hundred and sixty years have enjoyed "A Christmas Carol". The penny pinching, miser Ebenezer Scrooge has become synonymous with a tight wad. Even today a person who hoards his or her money is nicknamed a "Scrooge". Dickens' character was a man whose cold personality equal only to winters of London, and comforts or fortunes of other was unimportant to him.
