Four Bear Paws

Charles Dickens had originally planned to call his work “An Appeal to the People of England on behalf of the Poor Man’s Child.” It was to be a pamphlet criticizing poverty and brutal child labor practices. At the time, many thought helping the poor would make them lazy and lead to overpopulation. (Okay, they may have had a point. There were 18 million people in England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales in 1840, and nearly 66 million today.) Eventually Dickens scrapped the pamphlet idea in favor of a work of fiction. He worked feverishly on A Christmas Carol for six weeks. As he wrote, Dickens wept, laughed, and wandered the streets of London long into the night. His novella hit the shops December 17, 1843, selling out in three days. 174 years later, it still encourages us to see each other as “fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.”