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HOW DICKENS CASHED IN ON 'CAROL'

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By GEORGE MEYER

The Tampa Tribune

Published: December 21, 2008

"The Man Who Invented Christmas," by Les Standiford (Crown, $19.95)

We're often taught that the classics come from authors driven by just about anything but a desire to make money. While that may be a teacher's shorthand to distinguish long, unreadable tomes from text-message emoticons, it's not necessarily an accurate distinction.

Certainly not, as South Florida writer Les Standiford explains, in the case of Charles Dickens.

In Standiford's story of how Dickens conceived, executed and benefited from his classic short novel "A Christmas Carol," Dickens was almost all about the Benjamins.

The year was 1843 and Dickens was suffering from a financial letdown after the previously successful serialization of "Pickwick Papers," "Nicholas Nickleby" and "Martin Chuzzlewit."

Dickens was only 31, but already had acquired a full load of financial obligations. He supported not only his own wife and five children but also his ne'er-do-well father and his family.

While his name had risen as competition to authors such as Walter Scott, his stories were declining in sales. Even worse, his own self-confidence slumped accordingly.

In short, Dickens needed a hit.

A hardscrabble boyhood had given him sympathies for the working poor of England and the need for social reforms that could save children from mangling in factory machines, women from selling themselves for survival and men from the severe degradations that even the most minor failures could inflict.

Although Dickens disdained organized religion, he seized on the mid-winter spirit of Christmas, a holiday whose meager popularity had come and gone in mid-19th century England. The birth of Christ deserved little attention from most Victorian pulpits; gift-giving was almost unheard of (and doesn't appear in "A Christmas Carol" either) and even the raising of trees was a custom borrowed - infrequently - from the Germans.

Dickens proposed no such move toward Christian worship, but rather chose the winter holiday as a time for a good-cheer respite from a chilly season.

He wrote a story about a nasty boss, Scrooge, who lorded over a long-suffering employee, Bob Cratchit, who had an innocent crippled son, Tiny Tim. For a boy who had worked as a bootblack and seen his father treated cruelly by landlords and lenders, Dickens found it to be familiar territory.

Further, Dickens made a unique arrangement with his publishers, striking a deal in which the publisher emerged only as his printer, and with Dickens making the most of whatever profits may come.

While Dickens' slim volume has over time become a worldwide holiday touchstone with hundreds of stagings and filmings, the book wasn't an immediate success.

Caught up in his own ambitions for the book, Dickens had allowed printing, illustrating and binding costs to eat up much of the revenue earned by the book. While reviews were generally excellent, by the time Dickens covered his expenses and other pressing obligations, he wasn't much better off than before the project began.

But the little book inspired other changes. Imitations pirated by American publishers spread its popularity; stage interpretations widened its appeal and imitators dispersed the notion that heartwarming Christmas tales might be enjoyed over and over.

Subsequent editions of the book were printed more cheaply. Dickens himself went on the road for readings. And Christmas became part of nearly all of the populace from Europe to the Americas.

For Dickens, the carol broke his slump and led him confidently toward financial success and the future projects that every high school English student confronts today.

Standiford, who teaches creative writing at Florida International University in Miami, doesn't break much new ground in this book. He relies on secondary sources, and historians won't find his work indispensable. And he must constantly defend his overinflated title, since Dickens didn't really invent anything.

He does better with the subtitle: "How Charles Dickens's 'A Christmas Carol' rescued his career and revived our holiday spirits."

For anyone searching for a Christmas gift without batteries, "The Man Who Invented Christmas" makes for a marvelous seasonal accoutrement. And for young readers dulled by assigned readings of "A Tale of Two Cities" and "Bleak House," this crisply written account will serve as a marvelous scene-setter.

George Meyer, a writer and communications consultant, is president of the Meyer Publishing Co. of Tampa.

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