S02E19 A Christmas Carol — Marley's Ghost

Charles DickensCharles John Huffam Dickens was born in Portsmouth, Hampshire, England in 1812. He died in Higham, Kent in 1879, aged only 58 and was buried at Poet's Corner, Westminster Abbey—a high honour indeed. Dickens's writing was very popular during his lifetime and he was recognised as a literary genius by the 20th Century. His first success was The Pickwick Papers in 1836, when he was 24. He had been forced to go to work in a factory rather than school. Dickens worked pasting on labels on pots of boot blacking. Dickens's father was locked up in a debtor's prison. Dickens was not formally educated, though his writing shows formal rhetorical devices so he must have studied himself later. He was a voracious reader of the novels of his time and earlier. One of his great tricks was the cliffhanger ending and this came about because most of his fifteen novels and umpteen other works were published in weekly serial publications.  Dickens's characters tend to be larger than life and he is especially good at portraying the great poverty and terrible social situations that those in his close family had experienced . By work, his father was a clerk to the Royal Navy, the biggest employer in his home town of Portsmouth. There were eight children in the family. Dickens' third name Huffman came from his godfather, Christopher Huffman, a rigger in the Navy. Unfortunately, the Dickens family lived beyond their financial means, easy to do with a family of ten I should think. Dickens was massively famous and popular throughout his life and worked immensely hard, leading to ill-health in his fifties. He died of a stroke while writing Edwin Drood, leaving that novel unfinished. A Christmas CarolA Christmas Carol is possibly Dickens's most famous work, though there are so many to choose from.  It is the eve of December, and I have wanted to do this story since last year. It is such a delight to read Dickens's clever, lively prose after Henry James's convoluted sentences. Dickens's words always conjur