His personal experience of harsh working conditions and a deep sympathy for the poor inform much of his writing, and more than one scholar has made a life’s work out of tracing the parallels between the author’s life and his fiction. “ Dickens, who is generally considered one of the most accomplished writers in the English language, published twenty novels in his lifetime…and none of them has ever gone out of print. The Man Who Invented Christmas is a rich and satisfying read for Scrooges and sentimentalists alike. With warmth, wit, and an infusion of Christmas cheer, Les Standiford whisks us back to Victorian England, its most beloved storyteller, and the birth of the Christmas we know best. It was a harsh and dreary age, in desperate need of spiritual renewal, ready to embrace a book that ended with blessings for one and all. And it breathed new life into a holiday that had fallen into disfavor, undermined by lingering Puritanism and the cold modernity of the Industrial Revolution. He worried it might be the end of his career as a novelist. His publisher turned it down, so Dickens used what little money he had to put out A Christmas Carol himself. Just before Christmas in 1843, a debt-ridden and dispirited Charles Dickens wrote a small book he hoped would keep his creditors at bay. As uplifting as the tale of Scrooge itself, this is the story of how one writer and one book revived the signal holiday of the Western world.
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