Yesterday we revealed why A Christmas Carol, despite being a huge success immediately after it was published in December 1843, didn’t make Dickens much money. Today, we’re looking at some of the surprising legacies and adaptations of this classic book. For instance, take the world of gastropods. There is a species of Fijian snail called Ba humbugi, … Read more
Yesterday’s Christmas fact concerned the original draft of A Christmas Carol, Dickens’s most popular Christmas book. Today’s piece of Christmas literary trivia concerns the impact of this novella – and why its enormous success still left its author in financial trouble. Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol in six weeks during October and November 1843, and it appeared just … Read more
Yesterday’s festive fact concerned ‘A Christmas Carol’, but not the Christmas Carol. Today we’re moving on to Dickens’s enduring story of redemption and goodwill – the modern book that, more than any other, helped to instil us with a sense of the true spirit of Christmas (which is, of course, getting the biggest turkey you can … Read more
Over the last few days, we’ve been pondering, in a series of posts, the literary history of Father Christmas and Santa Claus. Yesterday, we looked at how Santa’s working relationship with the soft drinks industry is more complicated than we might think. Today, we’re moving from the world of drink to the world of food … Read more
By Viola van de Sandt Charles Dickens has of course become famous for his intricately woven tales of social injustice and rampant poverty. Yet the author also provided his readership with an enormous host of intriguing, elusive, bizarre and sometimes even grotesque characters, most of whom he gave especially fitting and equally fantastic names. For … Read more