The Man Who Invented Christmas
Chauncey Mabe - Dayton Daily News
Dec 05, 2008
The Man Who Invented Christmas: How Charles Dickens' 'A Christmas Carol' Rescued His Career and Revived Our Holiday Spirits, by Les Standiford; Crown ($19.95)
One of the many famous anecdotes arising from the life of Charles Dickens, the most important English novelist in the 19th century, came when the poet Theodore Watts-Duncan reported that a young cockney street vendor, having just heard of the author's passing, exclaimed, "Dickens dead? Then will Father Christmas die, too?"
Christmas has so long been entrenched as the top holiday in the Western calendar that it seems preposterous to date, as Les Standiford does in "The Man Who Invented Christmas," our now-common Yuletide traditions to the publication of a single book.
That book, of course, is "A Christmas Carol." Standiford, a mystery writer-turned-popular historian, brings fresh insight to the familiar story, among other things linking the revival of Christmas to the restorations of Dickens' own fortunes. With an eye for telling detail and a gift for synthesizing a broad range of sources into a tight and highly readable narrative, he packs an amazing amount of information into a relatively brief volume.
Among its other virtues, "The Man Who Invented Christmas" presents a biography of Dickens' life, from his time as an impoverished child laborer to his later youth as a newspaper reporter to his stunning early literary success with "The Old Curiosity Shop."
"David Copperfield," "Great Expectations" and Dickens' other more "serious" novels sometimes overshadow "A Christmas Carol." Standiford argues for its literary merit -- for the cadences, wry humor, the fantasy grounded in reality.
Modern audiences who know the story only from its many TV and movie dramatizations, he writes, sadly miss these elements.
----
Sound Off...What do you think? Join the discussion
Copyright 2012 by Dayton Daily News
