The Backstory: Making a statement with A Christmas Carol

Was Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" inspired by political outrage? That’s the story and it makes sense when you hear what he went through and what he was seeing in London back in 1843.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
So we've just gotten through the Christmas season, and one
of the most recognizable stories is Charles Dickens A Christmas Carol.
It popularized the term Merry Christmas. For gosh sakes, it's
warm and full of life lessons. But what's this about
Dickens being a political rabble rouser and his warm, fuzzy
story being inspired by a statement he was trying to

(00:21):
make but nobody was listening to. I'm Patty Steele making
a point by telling a story that's next on the backstory.
The backstory is back. As the Christmas season winds down,
it's interesting to trace some of the origins of our traditions,
especially the stories we tell. Okay, perfect example, and no,

(00:46):
we're not talking about Diehard, which, despite lots of disagreement,
even Bruce Willis said was absolutely not a Christmas movie.
What do you think of that? We're talking about Charles
Dickens A Christmas Carol. It was originally published in a
teen forty three and, as you probably already know, is
the story of a nasty, miserly old guy named Ebenezer Scrooge.

(01:08):
In the tale, he is visited by the ghost of
his former business partner, Jacob Marley, who introduces him to
the ghosts of Christmas past, present, and ominously, the ghost
of Christmas yet to come. By the end of the story,
Scrooge has had his wits scared out of him and
he becomes a kinder, gentler man. So what made Dickens

(01:30):
write a Christmas Carol? Well, First of all, it came
about at the same time the Victorians in England were
turning Christmas celebrations into a warm, festive, family oriented holiday.
Instead of either the insane adults only drinking fest it
was for a lot of folks, or the ultra religious
snow festivities at all occasions it was for others. This

(01:53):
was the era in which Christmas trees came to be
and Christmas Carols were becoming more popular again. Presents and
big feasts were all the rage. By late eighteen forty two,
the year before A Christmas Carol was published, Dickens was
doing pretty well. He'd had six major works and a
number of short stories published over the past few years. Then,

(02:15):
on New Year's Eve of eighteen forty two, he began
publishing a serial novel called Martin Chuzzlewit as a monthly release.
He loved it. The public not so much. Sales were
not great, His wife was pregnant with their fifth child,
and Dickens needed money since his publishers were also threatening
to reduce his salary because of those poor sales. At

(02:38):
the same time, he was really disturbed by the living
conditions of the poor in London, particularly London street children,
and all the holiday excess only made Dickens feel worse
for the poor and the suffering. You see, Charles had
grown up in a middle class family, but his dad
was not a careful guy when it came to money,

(02:58):
and he wound up in Debtor's when Charles was twelve
years old. Yeah, debtors Prison was a real thing in
those days now. In order to help support his family,
Charles had to sell his own book collection, leave school
and work at a dirty, rat infested shoe polish factory.
It shocked him and left him feeling outraged by the

(03:18):
conditions the poor lived with, which influenced his writing. By
the eighteen forties, the Industrial Revolution was in full swing
and Dickens towed orphanages, schools, factories and minds where he
saw little children working under terrible conditions. Dickens was horrified
and he wanted Londoners to know what was happening. He

(03:39):
started by writing a political pamphlet called an Appeal to
the People of England on Behalf of the poor Man's
Child as a long title, but he changed his mind.
He felt an allegory type story would get the attention
of more people than a political lecture about poverty and injustice,
so he began a Christmas Carol in October of eighteen

(04:00):
forty three. He was so passionate about the subject he
managed to finish the story into six weeks. Family members
said he built the story in his head while taking
these really late walks of up to twenty miles per
night around London. Historians say Dickens wanted a Christmas Carol
to open readers' hearts to poverty stricken folks just trying

(04:22):
to survive, and to encourage charity from those more well off.
He also wanted to warn them about the danger to
society if they continued to tolerate the suffering of the poor.
Where did he get the inspiration for the characters in
a Christmas Carol? Well some say it's possible that Scrooge's
name came from a gravestone Dickens saw in Scotland, but

(04:43):
the grave was actually for a guy named Ebenezer Lennox Scroggey,
whose job was recorded as a meal man also known
as a corn merchant, where it is Dickens misread the
inscription as a mean man, and thus he was inspired
to create the Spooky Old Mind. Now some scholars dispute
that as a possible Dickens hoax to publicize his story,

(05:06):
but who knows. The book was hugely successful, selling out
its first edition of six thousand copies by Christmas Eve,
just five days from the day they published it, and
his new editions came out. It kept selling, with eleven
more editions in the first year alone. Since then, the
book has been issued over and over and over again

(05:27):
in hardback and paperback editions, translated into over one hundred
and fifty languages, and has never been out of print.
A Christmas Carol has been adapted a ton of times
for film, stage, opera, and other media too. In eighteen
forty nine, Dickens started doing public readings of the story,
which were so successful he did one hundred and twenty

(05:49):
seven more in the next twenty years until his death
in eighteen seventy. The beauty of this story is if
you are passionate about something and you find the best
way to share your passion, you never know where it
can take you. Hope your holidays have been wonderful and

(06:16):
I hope you're enjoying The Backstory with Patty Steele. Follow
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and feel free to dm me if you have a
story you'd like me to cover. On Facebook, It's Patty
Steele and on Instagram Real Patty Steele. I'm Patty Steele.
The Backstories a production of iHeartMedia, Premiere Networks, the Elvis

(06:39):
Duran Group, and Steel Trap Productions. Our producer is Doug Fraser.
Our writer Jake Kushner. We have new episodes every Tuesday
and Friday. Feel free to reach out to me with
comments and even story suggestions on Instagram at Real Patty
Steele and on Facebook at Patty Steele. Thanks for listening
to the Backstory with Patty Steele. The pieces of history

(07:00):
you didn't know you needed to know.