Then divide 1 by the number of minutes to get the reading speed: 1/3 0.33. How long does it take to read A Christmas Carol 300 pages? Published in December 1843, Charles Dickens A Christmas Carol was an instant bestseller, followed by countless print, stage and screen productions. No feelingit is nothing but glittering frostwork., Creative Forces: NEA Military Healing Arts Network, Independent Film & Media Arts Field-Building Initiative, Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), National Endowment for the Arts on COVID-19, American Artscape Sneak Peek: In Celebration of Artful Lives, The Artful Life Questionnaire: Tamika Shingler. Dickens' publisher Chapman and Hall replaced these with yellow endpapers and reworked the title page in harmonising red and blue shades. A Christmas Carol: The True History Behind the Dickens Story | Time Scrooge, Marley's business partner, signed the register of his burial. After hearing a Carol reading by Dickens in Boston on Christmas Eve in 1867, a businessman decided to close his factory for Christmas. How Long to Read - Search millions of books The treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigour, then?" [112] In early 1844 The Gentleman's Magazine attributed a rise of charitable giving in Britain to Dickens's novella;[113] in 1874, Robert Louis Stevenson, after reading Dickens's Christmas books, vowed to give generously to those in need,[114] and Thomas Carlyle expressed a generous hospitality by hosting two Christmas dinners after reading the book. The first was the widespread sense that poor people tended to be so because they were lazy and immoral, and that helping them would only encourage their malingering. You can see a digital copy of the manuscript on the Morgan Library and Museumwebsite. Yet what Dickens did propose in A Christmas Carol, which he scribbled out in less than two months in the fall of 1843intending it, in his words, as a sledge hammer blowwas still radical, in that it rejected the modern ideas about work and the economy. Search for a book, tell us how fast you read, and start reading! The narrator states that there was no doubt about Marley 's death. He read of 8-year-old children who dragged coal carts through tiny subterranean passages over a standard 11-hour workday. Yet a few days later he changed his mind, noting in a letter on March 10, 1843, that he'd put off the pamphlet because he had other means in mind with "twenty thousand times the force" of this initial approach. A Christmas Carol - SparkNotes [19] In March he wrote to Dr Southwood Smith, one of the four commissioners responsible for the Second Report, about his change in plans: "you will certainly feel that a Sledge hammer has come down with twenty times the forcetwenty thousand times the forceI could exert by following out my first idea". [14] More broadly, Dickens was influenced by fairy tales and nursery stories, which he closely associated with Christmas, because he saw them as stories of conversion and transformation. This gives you the possibility to save and share your text. [6], Dickens had an interest in Christmas, and his first story on the subject was "Christmas Festivities", published in Bell's Weekly Messenger in 1835; the story was then published as "A Christmas Dinner" in Sketches by Boz (1836). By novelistic standards, his transformation is absurdly complete and quick. You can lessen that number by learning to read faster. How many days will you devote to studying the book? You have reached your limit of free articles. But book sales weren't enough to cover the costs of production, which had included an array of last-minute changes insisted upon by Dickens. "[37][n 4], There are literary precursors for Scrooge in Dickens's own works. Live Updates: The Civil Rape Case Against Donald Trump Goes to Trial A one-reading experience lends the narrative an intensity that is the special . Find out how long it will take you to read any book by using our book word count search.