A Christmas Carol

Notes

  1. ^ These were Sketches by Boz (1836); The Pickwick Papers (1836); Nicholas Nickleby (1837); Oliver Twist (1838); The Old Curiosity Shop (1841); and Barnaby Rudge (1841).[2]
  2. ^ Serialisation was in 20 parts, which concluded on 30 June 1844.[3]
  3. ^ The addition of the line has proved contentious to some.[29] One writer in The Dickensian – the journal of the Dickens Fellowship wrote in 1933 that "the fate of Tiny Tim should be a matter of dignified reticence ... Dickens was carried away by exuberance, and momentarily forgot good taste".[29]
  4. ^ Carlyle's original question was written in his 1840 work Chartism.[38]
  5. ^ Grub's name came from a 19th-century Dutch miser, Gabriel de Graaf, a morose gravedigger.[41]
  6. ^ Scroggie was unlike Scrooge in nature, and was described as "a well-known hedonist who loved wine, women, and parties ... a dandy and terrible philanderer who had several sexual liaisons which made him the talk of the town ... a jovial and kindly man".[43]
  7. ^ Henry was also used as the basis for Paul Dombey Jr in Dombey and Son.[47]
  8. ^ Others who have examined the Christian theme include Geoffrey Rowell,[24] Claire Tomalin[52] and Martin Sable.[53]
  9. ^ The author G. K. Chesterton wrote of Dickens's religious views that "the tone of Dickens towards religion, though like that of most of his contemporaries, philosophically disturbed and rather historically ignorant, had an element that was very characteristic of himself. He had all the prejudices of his time. He had, for instance, that dislike of defined dogmas, which really means a preference for unexamined dogmas."[55] Dickens stated that "I have always striven in my writings to express the veneration for the life and lessons of our Saviour."[56]
  10. ^ The full verse of I John 3:17 is "But whoso hath this world's good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?"[57]
  11. ^ In 1875 Mitton sold the manuscript to the bookseller Francis Harvey – reportedly for £50 (equal to £5,000 in 2024 pounds) –[68] who sold it to the autograph collector, Henry George Churchill, in 1882; in turn Churchill sold the manuscript to Bennett, a Birmingham bookseller. Bennett sold it for £200 to Robson and Kerslake of London, which sold it to Dickens collector Stuart M. Samuel for £300. It was purchased by J. Pierpont Morgan for an undisclosed sum and is now held by the Morgan Library & Museum, New York.[69]
  12. ^ Dickens's biographer, Claire Tomalin, puts the first edition profits at £137, and those by the end of 1844 at £726.[52]
  13. ^ The Parley version was titled A Christmas Ghost Story reoriginated from the original by Charles Dickens Esquire and analytically condensed for this work.[86]
  14. ^ One example of this was the introduction of turkey as the main meat of the Christmas meal. In Britain the tradition had been to eat roast goose, but a change to turkey followed the publication of the book. By 1868 Mrs Beeton, in her Book of Household Management, advised her readers that "A Christmas dinner, with the middle-class of this empire, would scarcely be a Christmas dinner without its turkey."[104]

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