The Man Who Invented Christmas (25 page)

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Authors: Les Standiford

______.
The Christmas Books,
vol. 1, edited by Peter Ackroyd. London: Mandarin, 1991.

______.
A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Writings,
edited by Michael Slater. New York: Penguin, 2002.

______.
Martin Chuzzlewit.
New York: Penguin, 1986.

Biographies

Of the many biographies of Dickens’s life, three distinguish themselves: Forster’s for being the first and coming from a friend and lifelong associate; Ackroyd’s for its comprehensiveness; and Smiley’s for its incisiveness.

Ackroyd, Peter.
Dickens.
New York: HarperCollins, 1990.

Forster, John.
The Life of Charles Dickens.
3 vols. London: Chapman and Hall, 1872–74.

Smiley, Jane.
Charles Dickens.
New York: Viking, 2002.

Tomalin, Claire.
The Invisible Woman: The Story of Nelly Ternan and Charles Dickens.
New York: Knopf, 1991.

Encyclopedia
(sketches of all things pertaining to Dickens, A–Z)

Oxford Reader’s Companion to Dickens,
edited by Paul Schlicke. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Dickens adaptations and editions

Bolton, Philip H.
Dickens Dramatized.
Boston: G. K. Hall, 1987.

Feather, John.
A History of British Publishing.
New York: Routledge, 1991.

Patten, Robert C.
Charles Dickens and His Publishers.
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978.

Dickens and
A Christmas Carol
and the Christmas season

Callow, Simon.
Dickens’ Christmas: A Victorian Celebration.
New York: Abrams, 2003.

Davis, Paul.
The Lives and Times of Ebenezer Scrooge.
New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990.

Guida, Fred.
A Christmas Carol and Its Adaptations.
Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1999.

Hearn, Michael Patrick.
The Annotated Christmas Carol.
New York: W. W. Norton, 2004.

Nissenbaum, Stephen.
The Battle for Christmas.
New York: Knopf, 1997.

Parker, David.
Christmas and Charles Dickens.
New York: AMS, 2005.

And other valuable sources

Baker, William, and Kenneth Womack, eds.
A Companion to the Victorian Novel.
Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2002.

The Dickensian.
Journal of the Dickens Fellowship. 1902–present.

Fielding, K. J.
Charles Dickens: A Critical Introduction.
London: Longmans, Green, 1958.

Glavin, John.
After Dickens: Reading, Adaptation, and Performance.
Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

Hutton, Ronald.
Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996.

Irving, John. “The King of the Novel,” in
Trying to Save Peggy Sneed.
New York: Little Brown/Arcade, 1996.

Jaques, E. T.
Charles Dickens in Chancery.
London: Longmans, Green, 1914.

Knight, Charles.
The Popular History of England,
vol. 8:
From the Peace with the United States, 1815, to the Final Extinction of the Corn-Laws, 1849.
London: Warne, 1890.

Lalumia, Christine. “Scrooge and Albert: Christmas in the 1840s.”
History Today,
December 2001: 23 et seq.

Persell, Michelle. “Dickensian Disciple: Anglo-Jewish Identity in the Christmas Tales of Benjamin Farjeon.”
Philological Quarterly
73.4 (1994): 451 et seq.

Phillips, Walter C.
Dickens, Reade and Collins: Sensation Novelists.
New York: Columbia University Press, 1919.

Rogers, Byron. “The Man Who Invented Christmas.”
Sunday Telegraph
(London), December 18, 1988: 16.

Schlicke, Paul.
Dickens and Popular Entertainment.
London: Unwin Hyman, 1988.

A
CKNOWLEDGMENTS

Very special thanks are due to several individuals who helped make this book possible: If I could not find what I was looking for, Addis Beesting, Educational Reference Librarian at Florida International University, could, and in a trice; James W. Hall, my ever-patient friend and literary compass, encouraged me and—as usual—helped me stay on track; bless Rachel Klayman, my editor, for carrying the flag for this book at Crown, and Lucinda Bartley, also at Crown, for her close eye and many helpful suggestions, and Kim Witherspoon, at Inkwell Management, for helping me collect my thoughts and battle plan. And, as always, many thanks to my wife, Kimberly, for her support and understanding—these days I am coming to dinner when it is called.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

L
ES
S
TANDIFORD
is the author of ten novels, as well as the critically acclaimed
Last Train to Paradise, Meet You in Hell,
and
Washington Burning.
Recipient of the Frank O’Connor Award for Short Fiction, he is director of the Creative Writing Program at Florida International University in Miami, where he lives with his wife and three children. Visit his website at
www.les-standiford.com
.

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Published in the United States by Crown Publishers, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

www.crownpublishing.com

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ROWN
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Standiford, Les.

The man who invented Christmas : how Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol rescued his career and revived our holiday spirits / Les Standiford.—1st ed.

Includes bibliographical references.

1. Dickens, Charles, 1812–1870. Christmas carol. 2. Christmas stories, English—History and criticism. 3. Christmas—England—History—19th century. 4. Christmas in literature. I. Title.