A Christmas Carol: The Original Manuscript
1843
A Christmas Carol: The Original Manuscript
1843
In 1843, Charles Dickens wrote a ghost story in five days that would reshape Christmas itself. Ebenezer Scrooge opens the novella as a miser so grotesque that he considers poverty a moral failing and joy an affliction. But on Christmas Eve, the specter of his dead partner Jacob Marley arrives in chains, followed by three spirits who shatter Scrooge's carefully constructed numbness. The Ghost of Christmas Past exposes the lonely boy and lost love that made him hard. The Ghost of Christmas Present reveals the simple warmth he has scorned, and the Cratchit family, including the dying Tiny Tim. The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come shows Scrooge his own unmourned grave. What follows is one of literature's most devastating transformations, as a man who hoards everything discovers he has nothing. Dickens weaves social critique and supernatural terror into a novella that feels less like a Victorian artifact and more like a direct address to anyone who has ever feared it is too late to change.
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“There is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humor.””
— Charles Dickens
“It is a fair, even-handed, noble adjustment of things, that while there is infection in disease and sorrow, there is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humour.””
— Charles Dickens
“You are fettered," said Scrooge, trembling. "Tell me why?""I wear the chain I forged in life," replied the Ghost. "I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it.””
— Charles Dickens
“I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach.””
— Charles Dickens
“No space of regret can make amends for one life's opportunity misused””
— Charles Dickens
“For it is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas, when its mighty Founder was a child Himself.””
— Charles Dickens
“You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of underdone potato. There's more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!””
— Charles Dickens
“There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say,' returned the nephew. 'Christmas among the rest. But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round”
— Charles Dickens
“But you were always a good man of business, Jacob,' faltered Scrooge, who now began to apply this to himself.Business!' cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. "Mankind was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The deals of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!””
— Charles Dickens
