![]() ![]() The Man Who Invented Christmas is a rich and satisfying read for Scrooges and sentimentalists alike. ![]() With warmth, wit, and an infusion of Christmas cheer, Les Standiford whisks us back to Victorian England, its most beloved storyteller, and the birth of the Christmas we know best. 'I was so taken with Dickens belief in his own material, his refusal to be turned away. It was a harsh and dreary age, in desperate need of spiritual renewal, ready to embrace a book that ended with blessings for one and all. The Man Who Invented Christmas is his only book about a writer, and one he identifies with. And it breathed new life into a holiday that had fallen into disfavor, undermined by lingering Puritanism and the cold modernity of the Industrial Revolution. ![]() He worried it might be the end of his career as a novelist. He has received the Frank O’Connor Award for Short Fiction and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the National. His publisher turned it down, so Dickens used what little money he had to put out A Christmas Carol himself. Les Standiford is the author of ten critically acclaimed novels as well as several works of nonfiction including Last Train to Paradise, The Man Who Invented Christmas, Meet You in Hell, and Washington Burning. Just before Christmas in 1843, a debt-ridden and dispirited Charles Dickens wrote a small book he hoped would keep his creditors at bay. As uplifting as the tale of Scrooge itself, this is the story of how Charles Dickens revived the signal holiday of the Western world-now a major motion picture. ![]()
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