The Man Who Invented Christmas by Les Standiford (2008)
How a debt-ridden Dickens wrote the book, paid to publish it, and changed Christmas.
Dickens was in debt, his publisher turned the book down, and he paid to publish it himself. It sold, and it changed how people keep the holiday.
You would rather know what actually happened in 1843, in a short history book.
What it keeps and what it changes
Keeps: the facts of 1843, and the book at the centre of them.
Changes: the form: this is history, not fiction. The 2017 film was made from it.
Whose story is it?
Dickens’s, and Christmas’s.
How much time does it ask?
256 pages, Crown paperback.
Crown, first published 4 November 2008; paperback 2011, 256 pages.
Where to find it
Buy the paperback — Bookshop.org
Other ways to get it: Paperback — Amazon · Ebook — Kobo · Kindle — Amazon
Borrow it free: Borrow on Libby · Find at your library — WorldCat
More Christmas Carols: The Penguin Classics edition, ed. Michael Slater (2003) · The Oxford World’s Classics edition, ed. Robert Douglas-Fairhurst (2008) · The Annotated Christmas Carol, ed. Michael Patrick Hearn (2004)