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The Man Who Invented Christmas
| Article
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10268 |
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BOOK WORLD
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| Issue
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12 / 1993 |
3,226 Words |
| Author
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Jack Ketch
Jack Ketch writes on music and the arts. |
A CHRISTMAS CAROL
A Facsimile Edition of the Autograph Manuscript
Charles Dickens
New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1993
168 pp., $30.00
In the 150 years since it was published, Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol has become his most celebrated and oft-adapted work. As it has gone from the printed page out into the world--annual radio readings by Lionel Barrymore, television adaptations by George C. Scott and Mr. Magoo, comic books with "Scrooge McDuck," and film versions featuring the likes of Alastair Sim, Bill Murray, Mickey Mouse, and the Muppets--it has been sliced and diced, chopped, grated, and processed into a kind of mystery meat, a substance that no longer bears much resemblance to anything, much less the brilliant literary achievement it once was.
Hence, welcome indeed is the appearance from Yale University Press of a facsimile edition of the autograph manuscript, accompanied by a typeset text, reproductions of John Leech's original illustrations, and an introduction by John Mortimer (author of the famous "Rumpole" stories). What better time to revisit the original story, or to discover it for the first time?
In his introduction, Mortimer reminds us that Christmas in the 1840s wasn't the booming commercial season it is now. Christmas cards hadn't been invented; there was no shopping season, no gift giving, and, of course, no seasonal blitz of Christmas Carol readings and presentations. With the exception of Washington Irving's "Old Christmas" essays in his Sketch Book (1820) and Clement Moore's "The Night before Christmas" (1823), there were few memorable works of literature identified with the subject. That all changed with Dickens. Truly, he more than anyone else invented the modern celebration of the season.
Dickens was twenty-four when he published his first Christmas essays and stories in Sketches by Boz (1836). In those days he affected the pseudonym Boz (a derivation of the middle name, Moses, of his youngest brother) and the image and manner of the dandy. We see him now, a quick and dapper fellow, London's newest literary sensation, smooth-faced (no chin whiskers yet), with flowing brown hair, flashing eyes, mobile features, and a wardrobe consisting of velvet cloaks, embroidered shifts, green waistcoats, and primrose yellow gloves.
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