A Christmas Carol Is Published
Next: December 19, 2026
The book that warmed Scrooge's heart.
The story
Where it comes from
This Story marks the anniversary of 19 December 1843, when Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol was published in London by Chapman and Hall. Dickens wrote it in about six weeks, finishing on 2 December. His publishers had little faith in it, so he paid for the publication himself in return for the profits, and insisted on a handsome five-shilling edition with illustrations by John Leech. The tale of the miser Ebenezer Scrooge, visited by the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future, was an immediate success.
How it's celebrated
The story remains a favourite to read in the run-up to Christmas or to see on stage and screen; the British Library calls it the most filmed and televised of Dickens's works. The Charles Dickens Museum in London, in the Doughty Street house where he lived from 1837 to 1839, is dressed for Christmas each season. It is a fine day to read the first chapter aloud, as Dickens himself did on stage.
Did you know
- The first printing of 6,000 copies sold out within days, but the lavish production meant Dickens made only £230 from it.
- Dickens's first public reading, of A Christmas Carol, was at Birmingham Town Hall in December 1853, in aid of the Birmingham and Midland Institute, with cheap tickets so that working people could come.
- The novelist William Thackeray called the book 'a national benefit, and to every man or woman who reads it a personal kindness'.
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