“I don’t know if that literal exchange took place, but I do think Dickens eventually made peace with his father,” said Standiford. “The tour was a resounding success for all,” said Standiford.Īdditionally, it is unclear whether Dickens ever threw his seemingly incorrigible father out of the family home, as seen in the movie. for a reading tour in the late 1860s, following the enormous popularity of A Christmas Carol overseas. “However, when he got over there, he found it far rougher than he was used to in England.”ĭespite the failure of his first tour, Dickens returned to the U.S. tour he knew that he had thousands of American readers and an appetite for his books was very lively,” said Standiford. in the early 1840s, on the back of the success of novels such as Oliver Twist, did not go so well. However, as The Man Who Invented Christmas lightly touches upon, Dickens’ tour of the U.S. “He even went on to write four more Christmas books but none were even nearly as successful as A Christmas Carol.”Īs the movie explores, Dickens was not only popular in Britain but in the United States too, which is why A Christmas Carol generated excitement over the festival across the pond too. “Dickens had no notion of what the festival would become today, but he was clearly onto something,” Les Standiford, who wrote the book on which the movie is based, told TIME. Dickens died in 1870 and is buried in Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey.The publication and instant popularity of A Christmas Carol became part of a series of factors that helped raise Christmas’ status over the course of that decade. Dickens had ten children with his wife Catherine Hogarth, but their marriage was never happy and Catherine left him after Dickens had an affair with the actress Ellen Ternan. He worked tirelessly, producing a magazine Household Words (later All the Year Round) and cranking out still-famous novels including Oliver Twist, Bleak House, Great Expectations, David Copperfield and A Christmas Carol. He also enjoyed huge popularity in America where he made several reading tours. As a novelist, Dickens was successful from the start, with the publication of The Pickwick Papers in 1836, and quickly became the most famous writer in Victorian England for his unforgettable characters, comic ingenuity, and biting social critique.

He left school at age 15, but read voraciously and acquired extensive knowledge through jobs as a law clerk, court reporter, and journalist. His experience of financial hardship and impoverishment greatly influenced the content of his stories, and his ambition. When his father was briefly imprisoned for debt, Charles worked long days at a warehouse.

Born to a naval clerk, Dickens moved with his family to London at age 10.

Charles dickens the christmas carol