Yesterday we looked at an important literary influence on the American Christmas tradition, from the nineteenth century. Today, one of the most important twentieth-century literary contributions to Christmas, courtesy of a children’s writer whose books have sold over half a billion copies worldwide (but whose name most of us are still mispronouncing). The writer we’re … Read more
The last few ‘windows’ of this literary advent calendar have been shedding light on Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, and Dickens’s role in helping to popularise the idea of the modern Christmas. But there is another writer who probably did more for Christmas than even Dickens did. Although we often talk about Dickens (1812-70) as the one … Read more
Over the last few days, we’ve discussed Dickens’s A Christmas Carol and the various interesting facts that we’ve unearthed surrounding its composition, publication, and legacy. It is, of course, one of the most enduring stories of the Victorian age – perhaps of all time. But A Christmas Carol wasn’t the first Christmas story Dickens wrote. It … Read more
Over the last few days we’ve been so preoccupied with Christmas food that we’ve lost sight of the magical side of Christmas, so today’s literary fact returns us to the rarefied heights of the classic Christmas carol. We’ll stick with the Victorians, though, since so much of our modern Christmas owes something to them. Carols … Read more
Yesterday we considered that gastronomic phenomenon that is the Christmas dinner, and revealed Dickens’s early piece of journalism about Christmas time, written some eight years before A Christmas Carol. Today, on to pudding – yes, today’s literature fact might be considered the dessert course in our feast of festive literary morsels. According to the Oxford English … Read more