A Christmas Carol - The Original Manuscript in Original Size - With Original Illustrations

by Charles Dickens

Overview

Charles Dickens wrote "A Christmas Carol" in six weeks at the end of 1843, during a particularly intense time of creativity. He was having financial difficulties and was determined to have the manuscript ready for publication for the Christmas market. This book contains an original size clear copy Dickens' one and only manuscript, written by his hand, with his revisions and corrections evident on every page. The revisions show how Dickens made the verbs become more active, the number of words became fewer, achieving greater immediacy and vividness. This manuscript was handed to the printer in this form and was published on 19th December 1843.

This edition has each of the 66 pages of the original manuscript copied onto the left hand page and the corresponding words typed on the right hand page. The book also contains the eight original illustrations by John Leech, the four color illustrations are on the cover of the book.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781781393901
Publisher:	Benediction Books
Publication date:	06/09/2013
Pages:	166
Product dimensions:	8.30(w) x 11.00(h) x 0.30(d)

About the Author

Born on February 7, 1812, Charles Dickens was the second of eight children in a family burdened with financial troubles. Despite difficult early years, he became the most successful British writer of the Victorian age.

In 1824, young Charles was withdrawn from school and forced to work at a boot-blacking factory when his improvident father, accompanied by his mother and siblings, was sentenced to three months in a debtor's prison. Once they were released, Charles attended a private school for three years. The young man then became a solicitor's clerk, mastered shorthand, and before long was employed as a Parliamentary reporter. When he was in his early twenties, Dickens began to publish stories and sketches of London life in a variety of periodicals.

It was the publication of Pickwick Papers (1836-1837) that catapulted the twenty-five-year-old author to national renown. Dickens wrote with unequaled speed and often worked on several novels at a time, publishing them first in monthly installments and then as books. His early novels Oliver Twist (1837-1838), Nicholas Nickleby (1838-1839), The Old Curiosity Shop (1840-1841), and A Christmas Carol (1843) solidified his enormous, ongoing popularity. As Dickens matured, his social criticism became increasingly biting, his humor dark, and his view of poverty darker still. David Copperfield (1849-1850), Bleak House (1852-1853), Hard Times (1854), A Tale of Two Cities (1859), Great Expectations (1860-1861), and Our Mutual Friend (1864-1865) are the great works of his masterful and prolific period.

In 1858 Dickens's twenty-three-year marriage to Catherine Hogarth dissolved when he fell in love with Ellen Ternan, a young actress. The last years of his life were filled with intense activity: writing, managing amateur theatricals, and undertaking several reading tours that reinforced the public's favorable view of his work but took an enormous toll on his health. Working feverishly to the last, Dickens collapsed and died on June 8, 1870, leaving The Mystery of Edwin Drood uncompleted.

Author biography from the Barnes & Noble Classics edition of David Copperfield.

Date of Birth:

February 7, 1812

Date of Death:

June 18, 1870

Place of Birth:

Portsmouth, England

Place of Death:

Gad's Hill, Kent, England

Education:

Home-schooling; attended Dame School at Chatham briefly and Wellington