1
00:00:00,360 --> 00:00:03,400
Speaker 1: So we've just gotten through the Christmas season, and one

2
00:00:03,440 --> 00:00:07,400
Speaker 1: of the most recognizable stories is Charles Dickens A Christmas Carol.

3
00:00:07,840 --> 00:00:11,719
Speaker 1: It popularized the term Merry Christmas. For gosh sakes, it's

4
00:00:11,760 --> 00:00:14,960
Speaker 1: warm and full of life lessons. But what's this about

5
00:00:15,000 --> 00:00:18,520
Speaker 1: Dickens being a political rabble rouser and his warm, fuzzy

6
00:00:18,560 --> 00:00:21,640
Speaker 1: story being inspired by a statement he was trying to

7
00:00:21,680 --> 00:00:25,960
Speaker 1: make but nobody was listening to. I'm Patty Steele making

8
00:00:25,960 --> 00:00:30,080
Speaker 1: a point by telling a story that's next on the backstory.

9
00:00:33,960 --> 00:00:37,840
Speaker 1: The backstory is back. As the Christmas season winds down,

10
00:00:37,920 --> 00:00:41,360
Speaker 1: it's interesting to trace some of the origins of our traditions,

11
00:00:41,720 --> 00:00:45,839
Speaker 1: especially the stories we tell. Okay, perfect example, and no,

12
00:00:46,240 --> 00:00:50,040
Speaker 1: we're not talking about Diehard, which, despite lots of disagreement,

13
00:00:50,159 --> 00:00:53,400
Speaker 1: even Bruce Willis said was absolutely not a Christmas movie.

14
00:00:53,600 --> 00:00:56,600
Speaker 1: What do you think of that? We're talking about Charles

15
00:00:56,640 --> 00:01:00,440
Speaker 1: Dickens A Christmas Carol. It was originally published in eighteen

16
00:01:00,560 --> 00:01:03,680
Speaker 1: forty three, and, as you probably already know, is the

17
00:01:03,720 --> 00:01:07,880
Speaker 1: story of a nasty, miserly old guy named Ebenezer Scrooge.

18
00:01:08,560 --> 00:01:11,120
Speaker 1: In the tale, he is visited by the ghost of

19
00:01:11,120 --> 00:01:15,560
Speaker 1: his former business partner, Jacob Marley, who introduces him to

20
00:01:15,600 --> 00:01:20,080
Speaker 1: the ghosts of Christmas past, present, and ominously, the ghost

21
00:01:20,160 --> 00:01:23,280
Speaker 1: of Christmas yet to come. By the end of the story,

22
00:01:23,480 --> 00:01:26,320
Speaker 1: Scrooge has had his wits scared out of him and

23
00:01:26,360 --> 00:01:30,280
Speaker 1: he becomes a kinder, gentler man. So what made Dickens

24
00:01:30,360 --> 00:01:33,720
Speaker 1: write a Christmas Carol? Well, First of all, it came

25
00:01:33,800 --> 00:01:37,240
Speaker 1: about at the same time the Victorians in England were

26
00:01:37,240 --> 00:01:42,200
Speaker 1: turning Christmas celebrations into a warm, festive, family oriented holiday.

27
00:01:42,560 --> 00:01:46,240
Speaker 1: Instead of either the insane adults only drinking fest it

28
00:01:46,360 --> 00:01:49,080
Speaker 1: was for a lot of folks, or the ultra religious

29
00:01:49,160 --> 00:01:53,200
Speaker 1: snow festivities at all occasions it was for others. This

30
00:01:53,360 --> 00:01:56,080
Speaker 1: was the era in which Christmas trees came to be

31
00:01:56,520 --> 00:02:00,680
Speaker 1: and Christmas Carols were becoming more popular again. Presents and

32
00:02:00,800 --> 00:02:05,080
Speaker 1: big feasts were all the rage. By late eighteen forty two,

33
00:02:05,160 --> 00:02:08,640
Speaker 1: the year before A Christmas Carol was published, Dickens was

34
00:02:08,680 --> 00:02:11,760
Speaker 1: doing pretty well. He'd had six major works and a

35
00:02:11,840 --> 00:02:15,679
Speaker 1: number of short stories published over the past few years. Then,

36
00:02:15,800 --> 00:02:18,680
Speaker 1: on New Year's Eve of eighteen forty two, he began

37
00:02:18,760 --> 00:02:23,880
Speaker 1: publishing a serial novel called Martin Chuzzlewit as a monthly release.

38
00:02:24,320 --> 00:02:27,760
Speaker 1: He loved it. The public not so much. Sales were

39
00:02:27,800 --> 00:02:31,080
Speaker 1: not great, his wife was pregnant with their fifth child,

40
00:02:31,400 --> 00:02:35,040
Speaker 1: and Dickens needed money since his publishers were also threatening

41
00:02:35,040 --> 00:02:38,280
Speaker 1: to reduce his salary because of those poor sales. Now,

42
00:02:38,480 --> 00:02:41,240
Speaker 1: at the same time, he was really disturbed by the

43
00:02:41,280 --> 00:02:46,000
Speaker 1: living conditions of the poor in London, particularly London street children,

44
00:02:46,480 --> 00:02:49,919
Speaker 1: and all the holiday excess only made Dickens feel worse

45
00:02:49,960 --> 00:02:52,960
Speaker 1: for the poor and the suffering. You see, Charles had

46
00:02:53,000 --> 00:02:56,000
Speaker 1: grown up in a middle class family, but his dad

47
00:02:56,120 --> 00:02:58,400
Speaker 1: was not a careful guy when it came to money,

48
00:02:58,800 --> 00:03:01,359
Speaker 1: and he wound up in Debtors Prison when Charles was

49
00:03:01,400 --> 00:03:04,680
Speaker 1: twelve years old. Yeah, Debtor's prison was a real thing

50
00:03:04,720 --> 00:03:07,840
Speaker 1: in those days. Now. In order to help support his family,

51
00:03:08,240 --> 00:03:11,640
Speaker 1: Charles had to sell his own book collection, leave school

52
00:03:12,080 --> 00:03:15,400
Speaker 1: and work at a dirty, rat infested shoe polish factory.

53
00:03:15,919 --> 00:03:19,080
Speaker 1: It shocked him and left him feeling outraged by the

54
00:03:19,120 --> 00:03:23,200
Speaker 1: conditions the poor lived with, which influenced his writing. By

55
00:03:23,240 --> 00:03:26,760
Speaker 1: the eighteen forties, the Industrial Revolution was in full swing

56
00:03:27,160 --> 00:03:31,360
Speaker 1: and Dickens toward orphanages, schools, factories and minds where he

57
00:03:31,400 --> 00:03:36,160
Speaker 1: saw little children working under terrible conditions. Dickens was horrified

58
00:03:36,360 --> 00:03:39,280
Speaker 1: and he wanted Londoners to know what was happening. He

59
00:03:39,400 --> 00:03:42,920
Speaker 1: started by writing a political pamphlet called an Appeal to

60
00:03:42,960 --> 00:03:45,640
Speaker 1: the People of England on behalf of the poor Man's

61
00:03:45,760 --> 00:03:48,760
Speaker 1: Child as a long title, but he changed his mind.

62
00:03:49,160 --> 00:03:52,160
Speaker 1: He felt an allegory type story would get the attention

63
00:03:52,320 --> 00:03:56,440
Speaker 1: of more people than a political lecture about poverty and injustice,

64
00:03:57,000 --> 00:03:59,960
Speaker 1: so he began a Christmas Carol in October of eight

65
00:04:00,000 --> 00:04:03,560
Speaker 1: teen forty three. He was so passionate about the subject

66
00:04:03,880 --> 00:04:06,640
Speaker 1: he managed to finish the story in just six weeks.

67
00:04:07,120 --> 00:04:09,800
Speaker 1: Family members said he built the story in his head

68
00:04:10,200 --> 00:04:13,160
Speaker 1: while taking these really late walks of up to twenty

69
00:04:13,200 --> 00:04:17,400
Speaker 1: miles per night around London. Historians say Dickens wanted a

70
00:04:17,480 --> 00:04:21,440
Speaker 1: Christmas Carol to open readers' hearts to poverty stricken folks

71
00:04:21,720 --> 00:04:25,200
Speaker 1: just trying to survive, and to encourage charity from those

72
00:04:25,240 --> 00:04:28,200
Speaker 1: more well off. He also wanted to warn them about

73
00:04:28,240 --> 00:04:31,599
Speaker 1: the danger to society if they continued to tolerate the

74
00:04:31,640 --> 00:04:34,880
Speaker 1: suffering of the poor. Where did he get the inspiration

75
00:04:35,040 --> 00:04:38,120
Speaker 1: for the characters in a Christmas Carol? Well Some say

76
00:04:38,120 --> 00:04:41,880
Speaker 1: it's possible that Scrooge's name came from a gravestone Dickens

77
00:04:41,960 --> 00:04:45,200
Speaker 1: saw in Scotland, but the grave was actually for a

78
00:04:45,200 --> 00:04:49,480
Speaker 1: guy named Ebenezer Lennox Scroggey, whose job was recorded as

79
00:04:49,520 --> 00:04:53,159
Speaker 1: a meal man also known as a corn merchant, where

80
00:04:53,160 --> 00:04:56,600
Speaker 1: it is Dickens misread the inscription as a mean man,

81
00:04:57,080 --> 00:05:00,800
Speaker 1: and thus he was inspired to create the spooky old Man.

82
00:05:00,960 --> 00:05:04,640
Speaker 1: Now some scholars dispute that as a possible Dickens hoax

83
00:05:04,720 --> 00:05:08,320
Speaker 1: to publicize his story, but who knows. The book was

84
00:05:08,440 --> 00:05:12,560
Speaker 1: hugely successful, selling out its first edition of six thousand

85
00:05:12,600 --> 00:05:16,160
Speaker 1: copies by Christmas Eve, just five days from the day

86
00:05:16,200 --> 00:05:19,120
Speaker 1: they published it, and his new editions came out. It

87
00:05:19,200 --> 00:05:23,320
Speaker 1: kept selling, with eleven more editions in the first year alone.

88
00:05:23,360 --> 00:05:26,279
Speaker 1: Since then, the book has been issued over and over

89
00:05:26,400 --> 00:05:31,000
Speaker 1: and over again in hardback and paperback editions, translated into

90
00:05:31,040 --> 00:05:34,240
Speaker 1: over one hundred and fifty languages, and has never been

91
00:05:34,279 --> 00:05:37,640
Speaker 1: out of print. A Christmas Carol has been adapted a

92
00:05:37,680 --> 00:05:41,560
Speaker 1: ton of times for film, stage, opera, and other media too.

93
00:05:42,400 --> 00:05:45,640
Speaker 1: In eighteen forty nine, Dickens started doing public readings of

94
00:05:45,640 --> 00:05:49,080
Speaker 1: the story, which were so successful he did one hundred

95
00:05:49,080 --> 00:05:52,200
Speaker 1: and twenty seven more in the next twenty years until

96
00:05:52,240 --> 00:05:55,720
Speaker 1: his death in eighteen seventy The beauty of this story

97
00:05:55,920 --> 00:05:59,080
Speaker 1: is if you are passionate about something and you find

98
00:05:59,120 --> 00:06:01,800
Speaker 1: the best way to share share your passion, you never

99
00:06:01,839 --> 00:06:04,880
Speaker 1: know where it can take you. Hope your holidays have

100
00:06:05,040 --> 00:06:08,120
Speaker 1: been wonderful and I hope you're enjoying The Backstory with

101
00:06:08,160 --> 00:06:11,719
Speaker 1: Patty Steele. Follow or subscribe for free to get new

102
00:06:11,760 --> 00:06:15,560
Speaker 1: episodes delivered automatically, and feel free to dm me if

103
00:06:15,560 --> 00:06:18,160
Speaker 1: you have a story you'd like me to cover. On Facebook,

104
00:06:18,200 --> 00:06:25,520
Speaker 1: It's Patty Steele and on Instagram Real Patty Steele. I'm

105
00:06:25,520 --> 00:06:30,120
Speaker 1: Patty Steele. The Backstories a production of iHeartMedia, Premiere Networks,

106
00:06:30,279 --> 00:06:34,160
Speaker 1: the Elvis Duran Group, and Steel Trap Productions. Our producer

107
00:06:34,200 --> 00:06:37,520
Speaker 1: is Doug Fraser. Our writer Jake Kushner. We have new

108
00:06:37,560 --> 00:06:41,080
Speaker 1: episodes every Tuesday and Friday. Feel free to reach out

109
00:06:41,080 --> 00:06:44,560
Speaker 1: to me with comments and even story suggestions on Instagram

110
00:06:44,760 --> 00:06:47,760
Speaker 1: at Real Patty Steele and on Facebook at Patty Steele.

111
00:06:48,160 --> 00:06:51,120
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to the Backstory with Patty Steele. The

112
00:06:51,200 --> 00:06:54,159
Speaker 1: pieces of history you didn't know you needed to know