The well-loved tale of redemption popular this time of year, A Christmas Carol, wasn’t sparked by joy, but sorrow. When London journalist and author Charles Dickens wrote what became the most copied secular Christmas fiction, he was dejected, financially stressed and fighting for societal reform.
To publish Scrooge’s trials in time for Christmas, he had to write it in six weeks, according to his great-great-great granddaughter, British author Lucinda Dickens Hawksley. She researched the circumstances behind her ancestor’s greatest hit for her books Dickens and Christmas and Victorian Christmas.
A Christmas Carol was published in December 1843, after a rough year for Dickens. “He was struggling with what we would call depression,” she told Illinois Times. His last two books hadn’t done well. One of those, American Notes, was about his travels through the U.S., including Illinois. He criticized American slavery and our state, calling our prairies monotonous and our southernmost, somewhat marshy region (Cairo) a “hotbed of disease” with nothing to “commend” it. To no surprise, the book didn’t do well here, but it fared the same in his homeland.
“People didn’t understand travel writing at that time,” said Hawksley. Dickens’ follow-up novel, Martin Chuzzlewit, didn’t do much better. (In it, he bashed Cairo again.)
His publisher was losing faith in Dickens’ ability. Adding pressure, his wife was pregnant with their fifth child and the author was already overdrawn at the bank, with relatives asking for handouts, according to Hawksley. “His father was always in debt, as was one of his brothers. They would constantly come to him to pay off their debts.”
Dickens needed a hit. But he wanted to make a difference, too.
When Dickens was a child, his family was imprisoned for debt. His parents felt his oldest sister would be the family breadwinner through her musical talents and let her stay in school while they were jailed, but they pulled 12-year-old Charles out of school. He lived alone in a lodging house and worked in a factory for about a year.
“Dickens had to pay for his family to get decent food in prison,” said Hawksley. “He knew what it was to be hungry,”
The experience scarred him. As an adult, Dickens worked with a reformer advocating for changes in child labor laws and increased poverty assistance. At that time, children worked long hours in dangerous coal mines and other industries. Dickens saw plenty of poverty and begging children on London’s streets. But he couldn’t believe the depth of the problem in northern England when he visited his sister and her disabled son there in October 1843, according to Hawskley’s website. The boy became the basis for Tiny Tim in A Christmas Carol.
“Sadly,” writes Hawskley, “unlike his fictional counterpart, (his nephew) did not survive – despite his uncle’s best efforts to pay doctors to save him.”
While Dickens was returning to London after that visit, Hawksley said, “he wrote to a friend that he had an idea for a story that he said would ‘strike a sledgehammer blow in favor of the poor man’s child.’” He worked quickly to have A Christmas Carol ready for holiday sales. Adding pressure, he had to pay for the publication himself. Dickens’ publishers refused to front the money due to his poor previous sales and desire for expensive illustrations.
The beloved holiday fantasy is a plea for reform, both societal and personal.
“The children in A Christmas Carol, Tiny Tim and the two children who appear with the Ghost of Christmas – they are called Ignorance and Want – they are the whole meaning of the story,” said Hawksley. In the book, miserly employer Ebenezer Scrooge becomes charitable and kind after being visited by three ghosts that show him – sometimes frighteningly – the repercussions of his ways. He gives his employee, Bob Cratchitt, a raise, helps the man’s disabled son, Tiny Tim, and keeps the spirit of Christmas forever.
The tale changed more hearts than Scrooge’s, according to Hawksley. It was published on Dec. 19, 1843, and sold out by Christmas Eve. A third printing was gone by New Year’s Eve. “It has never been out of print since,” she said.
After Dickens’ book was published, “there were more charities handing out food at Christmas,” according to Hawksley. While Christmas was a workday in England when Dickens wrote the story, by the end of his life it became an official holiday for all but domestic servants. They got the next day, Boxing Day, off work, when their employers brought them gifts and sometimes Christmas leftovers (which the servants themselves may have prepared).
Dickens tried to repeat his holiday blockbuster by writing four more books about Christmas, but none achieved the fame of his first.
Tara McClellan McAndrew is a freelancer writer based in Springfield who enjoys writing about history. She is currently on a trip to London, and while researching places to visit she learned about the Charles Dickens Museum and the history of his most famous Christmas story.
