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A Christmas Carol
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A Christmas Carol, with the full title of " A Christmas Carol in Prose, Being a Ghost Story of Christmas," is a Victorian morality tale by Charles Dickens, first published on December 19, 1843. The book was an instant success, selling more than six thousand copies in one week, and has continued to be a gift item for generations. Ironically, the book was first created as a potboiler, which is a written work created solely to make quick money. However, the message was too powerful to be a quick-sale book. As a result, A Christmas Carol has become a timeless classic.
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A Christmas Carol was the subject of Dickens' first ever public reading, given in Birmingham Town Hall to the Industrial and Literary Institute on 27 December 1852. This was repeated three days later to an audience of 'working people', and was a great success by his own account and that of newspapers of the time. Over the years Dickens edited the piece down and adapted it for a listening, rather than reading, audience. Excerpts from A Christmas Carol remained part of Dickens' public readings until his death.
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A Christmas Carol is famous book by the English writer Charles Dickens. It was first published on December 17, 1843. The pictures inside were drawn by John Leech. The story has a strong moral message against greed, among other things. It is usually read at Christmas time and has been adapted to theatre, film, radio, and television many times.
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Aside from the Bible, Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol is probably the most familiar and well-known book ever published. Scores of film adaptations have been made over the years, taking Dickens' story of one man's redemption to all the corners of the globe. The name Ebenezer Scrooge immediately brings to mind the miserly curmudgeon whose life and very nature were radically changed after the visitation of four ghosts one early Christmas morning. Jacob Marley, Scrooge's former partner, returns in spirit form to warn Scrooge of the ponderous chain he is forging in life by his penny-pinching, selfish, Christmas-hating ways. Then, of course, the ghosts of Christmas past, Christmas present, and Christmas future come to call for an increasingly troubled soul who comes to see the worthlessness of his purely materialistic life. A Christmas Carol offers a truly amazing character study.
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The seeds for the story that became A Christmas Carol were planted in Dickens' mind during a trip to Manchester to deliver a speech in support the Athenaeum, which provided adult education for the manufacturing workers there. Thoughts of education as a remedy for crime and poverty, along with scenes he had recently witnessed at the Field Lane Ragged School, caused Dickens to resolve to "strike a sledge hammer blow" for the poor.
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A Christmas Carol has been adapted to theatre, opera, film, radio, and television countless times. According to the Internet Movie Database, various movie adaptations of the story were filmed as early as 1908, in a version produced by Thomas Edison.
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A Christmas Carol