Dickens and Christmas

Charles Dickens is the great great great grandfather of author Lucinda Hawksley. I discovered Hawksley on social media and learned about her newest book Dickens and Christmas. I knew I had to read it!

A Christmas Carol has been a favorite story since Third Grade when I was Martha in a elementary school play. I memorized all the lines by heart watching rehearsals.

Our school play of A Christmas Carol, 1962

Growing up I watched every movie version every year. Later my husband and I read the story out loud and together watched our favorite movie versions. (I even wrote a paper about A Christmas Carol for my Studies in the Victorican Age course at university!)

Dickens and Christmas is a biographical history of Christmas in Dickens's personal and professional life, and a social history of the celebration's evolution in England in the Victorian Age. The celebration underwent a huge transformation to become the holiday we know today. We learn about the Twelfth Night celebration of Dickens's youth and the joyful celebrations he shared with his family.

Hawksley draws from writings by family members, letters, and the Christmas texts to create a vivid portrait of Dickens as family , writer, and social reformer.

Few readers today know about Dickens's other best-selling Christmas stories. They were so popular that he was required to write a new one every year, which became a source of great stress, requiring six months work while also writing his novels. The early novellas became short stories published in his magazines, Household Words and All the Year Round.

One of the aspects of the Christmas stories I love best of all is Dickens's desire to improve social conditions for the poor and most vulnerable in society. Dickens was a 'resistance' writer of his time, intending to bring awareness and sow seeds for legal and social change. I

Because of Dickens's Christmas writings, the season has become one of charity and good will.

God bless us, every one!

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Dickens and Christmas
by Lucinda Hawksley
Pen & Sword
Publication Date: October 30, 2017
ISBN:  9781526712264
PRICE: £19.99 (GBP)

Charles Dickens quilt by Nancy A. Bekofske

Charles Dickens quilt by Nancy A. Bekofske
In the style of  19th c British quilts, with embroidered images from his novels

Read about my Charles Dickens quilt at
https://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/2015/12/four-years-with-charles-dickens.html

Read more about Charles Dickens and A Christmas Carol at
https://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/2015/12/christmas-community-and-changed-lives.html

Read about Karen Kenyon's book Charles Dickens:Compassion and Contradiction at
https://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/2017/06/resistence-writer-charles-dickens.html