Christmas Carol
Author:
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens is one of the most beloved works of 19th century literature, and the story's enormous popularity helped make Christmas a major holiday in Victorian Britain. When Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol in late 1843 he had ambitious purposes in mind, yet he could never have imagined the profound impact his story would have. Dickens had already achieved great fame. Yet his most recent novel was not selling well, and Dickens feared his success had peaked. Indeed, he faced some serious financial problems as Christmas 1843 approached. And beyond his own worries, Dickens was keenly attuned to the profound misery of the working poor in England.
A visit to the grimy industrial city of Manchester motivated him to tell the story of a greedy businessman, Ebenezer Scrooge, who would be transformed by the Christmas spirit. (http://history1800s.about.com/od/authors/a/Christmas-Carol-By-Dickens.htm)
Autobiography:
Born to a poor family in Portsmouth, England on February 7, 1812, Charles John Huffam Dickens would become one of the most famous authors in English literature. The second of nine children, Dickens struggled with poor health as a child, and the frequency with which his family relocated interfered with any regular schedule of education. Instead, Dickens read widely on his own. He especially enjoyed fairy tales and adventure stories. He was himself forced to work at an early age in order to help support his family; at age 12, Dickens was labeling bottles of shoe polish in a London factory. This background-which was not a matter of public knowledge when Dickens achieved his later success and renown-clearly influences much of his writing. Dickens remained attuned to the problems of the poor and marginalized in Victorian society because he had been among them in