Magic of Dickens casts its spell on Chinese readers

Dickens was hugely popular in his lifetime, largely through his longer novels which were serialized in magazines in monthly instalments. What made A Christmas Carol different, and has contributed to its enduring legacy, was the possibilities offered by its short format.

"Dickens was concerned with the quality of paper, the binding, the hand coloring of illustrations and details like that, he thought of it as a complete package," Simon Eliot, emeritus professor of the history of the book at the University of London told China Daily.

"The first edition sold out in a week but the money spent producing it meant he didn't make any money on it, but five more editions in the next year meant he soon did."

As well as being discovered by a new reading audience every year, A Christmas Carol has proved endlessly adaptable for the stage and screen, with the Internet Movie Database website listing 79 exact title matches, and 200 more films and programs with related titles inspired by Dickens's work. But Dickens' contribution to Christmas came at a professional cost.

"It locked him in, every year he had to write another Christmas story for his magazines and he became almost trapped by a tradition he had generated," said Eliot. "In his novels, the Christmas scenes become much darker and more somber. The Christmases in Great Expectations or The Mystery of Edwin Drood are very dark, there's no tinsel and jollity."

But at Christmas more than ever, the Dickens Museum remains an irresistible magnet for booklovers from around the world.

"Christmas is our busiest time of year, when the public really want to come to see performances and the house decorated as Dickens would have known it," said Price.

"We know from his letters and some of his illustrations how he would have decorated it, so it's a very festive time to be here."