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1843: The story of the man who invented Christmas!
Mr Dickens and his Carol
What you need to know before your trail
Charles Dickens should be looking forward to Christmas. But when his latest book, Martin Chuzzlewit, is a flop, his publishers give him an ultimatum. Either he writes a Christmas book in a month or they will call in his debts and he could lose everything. Dickens has no choice but to grudgingly accept…
Travel Guide
Dickens’ London
An insight into a London where the streets were trampled by Charles Dickens. The world of Dickens and the world he created in his novels and inhabited himself comes out loud and clear.
“The night was an embroidery of stars on a taffeta sky so blue it bled all the black away. No more drab-colored December fringed with fog. The eve of Christmas week burst into the world, clear and dry, the streets one continuous blaze of ornament and show.”
The world that Dickens himself created in A Christmas Carol and all his novels including Oliver Twist and Bleak House ( and some of his life itself is a bit bleak as his own life is somewhat miserable as that of his characters) But it’s the world of A Christmas Carol which shines from this novel as the famous book is developed and created as the story advances. Dickens bumps into people along the way, whose names he borrows for characters in his novel. A maid gives him an idea for a plot twist and even his own father provides a literary device. But it’s Christmas and that’s the element of Dickens which comes out loud and clear. Like his character of Bob Cratchett and his family:
“Christmas had been hiding in the streets all along. The Dickens children marched behind their father in obedient single file, but their eyes were bright and round as new pennies. … The air smelled like it had hailed nutmeg and snowed cinnamon.”
Being in the world of Dickens as he’s creating his most iconic story is a most magical adventure indeed
Booktrailer Review
Susan: @thebooktrailer
This was just lovely! I love Dickens at Christmas and absolutely love being there at the moment when an author wrote a classic novel. Real or not, it’s a possible explanation for how he came up with the ideas and managed to publish it so quickly and I was taken up with the magic of it all.
Reading the author’s note at the end it seems that many events in the story are based on actual events, and are just embellished with others being changed more than some. It was just really cleverly put together and I felt we got a real insight into Dickens the man and the husband and indeed the father.
The parts where Dickens had a conversation that later came back to him and flowed through the ink on to the paper and into the story were delightful and when he met the people on the street who would later become characters in his novel….aah I squealed with even more delight! How fiction and tre life can merge in such a way. It does explain how A Christmas Carol could have been written and why and that for me was a real treat. Lovely to ‘meet’ Thackeray as well!
I have since seen “The Man who invented Christmas” and understand it’s nothing to do with this book but the book is much better and depicts the Dickens world in all its glory.
Booktrail Boarding Pass: Mr Dickens and His Carol
Destination: London Author/Guide: Samantha Silva Departure Time: 1843
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