Last year’s Christmas post explored our remarkable collection of holiday cards, from those sent by the Weeks family to a Christmas postcard mailed by a twentieth-century literary legend. This year, we focus on a single classic: Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. First published on December 19, 1843 – exactly 171 years ago today – Dickens’ aim in writing the book extended well beyond a simple celebration of the season.
Rather, the inspiration for the piece stemmed from his outrage over the squalid and exploitative working conditions faced by women and children in Industrial Revolution England. Dickens marshaled the considerable strength of his pen in the hopes that his efforts would yield “Something that would strike the heaviest blow in my power…something that would come down with sledgehammer force.” Scrooge, whose name was an amalgam of “screw” and “gouge,” represented the relentless pursuit of profit that Dickens perceived as a central problem in his industrializing country. Bob Cratchit and his family, including Tiny Tim, personified the costs exacted upon working-class families by men of Scrooge’s ilk. Today, though, Dickens’ original message remains largely muted. Scrooge, the Ghosts of Christmases Past, Present, and Future, and the Cratchit family, evoke more holiday nostalgia than social commentary. Indeed, A Christmas Carol‘s contributions to the nature of contemporary holiday culture has made Dickens, in the words of one writer, “The Man Who Invented Christmas.”
Perhaps Dickens’ social critique of business running roughshod over the working man and his family found more purchase in the winter of 1934. That December, the Limited Editions Club published A Christmas Carol for its members. The book was printed a week before Christmas and found a place on the shelves in Carl Weeks’ library at Salisbury House soon thereafter. The cover featured stylized Christmas trees, and Gordon Ross’s illustrations accompanied Dickens’ text.
Whatever message you take from Dickens’ classic this holiday season, we at Salisbury House wish you the best! May you echo an awakened Scrooge:
“I don’t know what to do!” cried Scrooge, laughing and crying in the same breath; and making a perfect Laocoön of himself with his stockings. “I am as light as a feather, I am as happy as an angel, I am as merry as a school-boy. I am as giddy as a drunken man. A merry Christmas to every-body! A happy New Year to all the world! Hallo here! Whoop! Hallo!”
Note: The Salisbury House Library Collection is now housed at Grinnell College, where it is being digitized and studied. To learn more about the collection check out the Special Collections Website.