The WPI Podcast: "A Christmas Carol" and All Things Charles Dickens with Professor Joel Brattin

Steve Foskett: 

Welcome to the WPI Podcast. I’m your host, Steve Foskett. Charles Dickens: where do we start? A Tale of Two Cities? Great Expectations? Oliver Twist? And why are we even talking about Dickens at a STEM-focused institution like WPI? Well, we have one of the premier Dickens collections around right here in the Gordon Library, for starters. And we have one of the premier Dickens scholars in Joel Brattin, professor of humanities and arts. And, well, it's December 16th. So of course, we'll be talking about a Christmas carol. Dickens’s iconic, and 181 years later, everlasting holiday tale. Joel, welcome to the podcast.

Joel Brattin: 

Thank you, Steve. It's a pleasure to join you. 

Foskett: 

Let's start by talking a little bit about where we are. We're in the Dickens Reading Room at WPI. What's important for people to know about this space? 

Brattin: 

Well, it's a splendid space that not only every WPI student and faculty member has access to, but the staff here will welcome community members as well. Anybody who wants to come explore the riches of WPI's Dickens collection can come here anytime. And we have an enormous and quite amazing collection. When I came to WPI in 1990, there were a few first editions and assigned check of Dickens' in the collection already. But we brought the Robert D. Fellman Dickens collection in the mid 1990s. And that formed the basis of our collection, bringing in hundreds of books, rare editions, Dickens' first editions, novels as they appeared in their original serial installments, many works of secondary criticism, bound volumes of journals that Dickens edited, and so on, and more Dickens letters. So this has attracted to other collections since then. So we have the amazing Ryan collection, the (Fred) Guida collection, and others that have come here. And they're all housed here in the Dickens Reading Room. 

Foskett: 

Obviously, it's the middle of December; “A Christmas Carol” is the big kahuna of Christmas stories, even 181 years later, like we talked about. Talk a little bit about “A Christmas Carol,” its staying power. How did it come about? Take us back to that time in the 1840s when he's writing it. Get inside his head a little bit for us. 

Brattin: 

I think there are a number of motivations for Dickens to write “A Christmas Carol.” Artistic motivations, obviously. But also economic ones. He had social and political goals with the book as well. He saw problems in the society that he lived in, and he wanted to address those. The financial issues-- Dickens was a huge star right from the beginning. His first novel, “The Pickwick Papers,” was a revolution. Everybody loved it. Everybody bought it. “Oliver Twist” followed then his third novel, “Nicholas Nickleby.” He was popular with his fourth and fifth novels, “Barnaby Rudge” and “The Old Curiosity Shop.” And then his sixth novel, “Martin Chuzzlewit,” wasn't as popular. Sales fell off. It's puzzling now to think about why that was. “Martin Chuzzlewit” is a very interesting and satisfying novel. But for whatever reason, this was Dickens' first sort of glimpse of not being a smash success. And he had a large family to feed. The older generation he was taking care of, as well as the younger generation. And so, many, many stresses on his pocket. And he thought that perhaps a Christmas book might fill the bill and bring in some additional income. So in the middle of writing “Martin Chuzzlewit”–he was not yet finished with that serial novel. All of Dickens' novels were published in parts, and serial installments. And as he was writing the end of “Martin Chuzzlewit,” he had the idea for “A Christmas Carol” and wrote it in a white-hot heat of creativity in about six weeks. He had it published with his publishers, Chapman and Hall, as quite a deluxe volume. It's a book that costs only five shillings for the consumer to buy. Hardbound book, nicely bound with gold lettering, embossed on it, and gilt edges. The illustrations for “A Christmas Carol,” there were eight illustrations, four of them hand-colored. And you think about what hand-colored illustrations means. If there's a first edition of 6,000 copies with four illustrations to be hand-colored, that's 24,000 pages that need multiple artists, one person holding a yellow paintbrush, one holding a blue paintbrush, one holding a red paintbrush, to color them all and get them bound into the right volumes. 

Foskett: 

That's fascinating. 

Brattin: 

It's amazing. The title page is multicolored, printed in different colors. Some things that would be perhaps easy to do with a laser printer now, but maybe not. 

Foskett: 

For the one person out there in the universe who doesn't know the plot of “A Christmas Carol,” kind of breeze us through the high points of his book. 

Brattin: 

A Christmas carol is not a novel. It's a short work of fiction. It's called a Christmas book. And it tells the familiar story of miser, businessman, Ebenezer Scrooge, who is visited one night on the anniversary of his partner Jacob Marley's death by the ghost of Jacob Marley, who tells him that he will be visited by three spirits, who come in the hope of reclaiming Scrooge from the torments that Jacob Marley himself suffers. So the ghost of Christmas past, the ghost of Christmas present, and the ghost of Christmas yet to come, sequentially visit Ebenezer Scrooge. And at the end of the short work, Scrooge sees the light, reforms, becomes a better and happier and more worthwhile person as a result of that intercession. Dickens called it “A Christmas Carol,” nodding to music, and divides the work into five, not chapters, but staves, keeping up the musical metaphor. So in the first stave, he meets Jacob Marley. In the second, the ghost of Christmas past, the third, the ghost of Christmas present with Bob Cratchit and his family, including Tiny Tim, who is well known for blessing us all. 

Foskett: 

So for that one person that didn't know the plot, I maybe should have said spoiler alert first, but I think the horse may be out of the barn at this point. 

Brattin: 

So many people know a Christmas carol who haven't read it. There's so many different ways to absorb it. I think it would be hard to find an American that hadn't heard, “God bless us, every one, said Tiny Tim.” Even if you've never read the book. 

Foskett: 

I'm always interested in how these things were received at the time. Sometimes you hear about an author, a poet, or something who wasn't really well known in their day. He was. And how was “A Christmas Carol” received? Was it a hit? Was it the hit that he needed? 

Brattin: 

It was. It was hugely successful, tremendously popular. The book was published on the 19th of December, 1843. And its first edition sold out before the end of the year. In fact, the second and third editions were well on their way to being sold out by the end of 1843. Everybody read it. It was also available to people who couldn't read, because it was dramatized immediately. By the 5th of February, 1844, there were eight different versions that were on stage in London. And it's been, of course, the subject of many, many adaptations since then. So people who don't read books can still see televised versions or film versions today. 

Foskett: 

And as a Dickens scholar, you've read everything he's written; what sticks out to you about what may have been the key to his success with this book? 

Brattin: 

Well, I think there are many wonderful things about the book. It's, in my view, Dickens' best work of short fiction. Dickens wrote a lot of short fiction. He wrote a lot of journalism, too. But his novels are justly the reason that he's most famous. But I think “A Christmas Carol” is a wonderful introduction for people who would like something shorter than a long novel to find out why Dickens is great. And what's great in the book? Well, Dickens' humor is there. His brilliant writing style, pathos–there's a lot to feel in the book. And it tells a powerful story. I think the idea that change is possible, that we can become better people even after years of not being better people. We can rise above that. We can learn and grow and feel for other people. And I think that those are a big part of why the book has endured, why it continues to attract readers decade after decade. 

Foskett: 

Just looking at the number of Netflix selections of Christmas Carol or Christmas Carol-derived things, there's always a little hint of that time of year reflecting on “am I a good person? Am I doing the right thing?” That still sort of sprinkles throughout popular culture. 

Brattin: 

That's right. And the seasonal connection is an important one. I think a lot of people have given Dickens credit for inventing Christmas, which goes a little too far. But he certainly did help bring back Christmas celebrations that had for quite a long time been unobserved. So the idea of the Christmas spirit was important to Dickens. It was something that he himself celebrated and enjoyed and wanted others to join in. 

Foskett: 

Obviously it was a hit. He did very well with it. Was he typecast after that? Was it sort of a-- was there an expectation of him to be able to keep churning out these popular hits? Where did he go after this? 

Brattin: 

This is the first of his Christmas books. He wrote four later Christmas books, typically published in the same kind of format, not published serially, but published as independent small books, hardbound. “A Christmas Carol” is the first and the best of those five Christmas books. But he never quite got to the heights of “A Christmas Carol.” Those who are interested in reading more of the Christmas books might be advised to try “The Cricket on the Hearth” or “The Chimes,” probably the best of the four remaining Christmas books. 

Foskett: 

Some good tips. So you're a professor here at WPI. You teach Dickens. You just wrapped up a class that looked at “A Christmas Carol.” How do you handle Dickens in the classroom? 

Brattin: 

Well, it's an interesting form of class that WPI offers. It's called an inquiry seminar. The enrollment is strictly capped. So it's a small number of students we meet down here in the reading room, sit around a seminar table, and talk about a Christmas Carol for two hours a week. The students do a great deal of writing. And many, many writing exercises, they have the opportunity to work with replicas of Dickens's manuscript so they can see what the things are that Dickens originally wrote, what he crossed out, and what he wrote in between the lines, giving a kind of a window into Dickens's creative process. And the students also have the opportunity to work with a rare, extremely rare, first edition of “A Christmas Carol,” part of WPI's amazing Dickens collections. I think it's unlikely that undergraduates anywhere else in the United States or maybe the world have access where they can actually get their hands on a first edition of “A Christmas Carol.” And I think students are quite moved by that. We also bring out other gems from the Dickens collections, original Dickens letters for the students to try their hand at deciphering. We've got original illustrations, original serial parts of the novels. And I always try to bring out a variety of things for students to look at, some of the gems of the collection. 

Foskett: 

Is there anything that stands out to you about their reaction to it, these modern students? What's interesting to you about their reaction to Dickens? 

Brattin: 

Well, the fact that they like “A Christmas Carol” doesn't surprise me. I'm used to people liking Dickens. I think I'm impressed with the appreciation that students have for the textual work that they do in this inquiry seminar. I have them carefully compare our purchased classroom text of “A Christmas Carol” with the first edition, or with readings from the manuscript. And it's a kind of careful, painstaking work that no student is really familiar with beforehand. And I'm always interested to see the things that they discover. They're making real discoveries in looking at the manuscript. It's not all been done before. And it always delights me to see the interest with which they approach those tasks. 

Foskett: 

Can you give us an example of something? This fascinates me. The manuscripts and the little notes in the margins, things like that. Is there anything in “A Christmas Carol” that he was thinking about that didn't make it in? Or anything that people might not know about how it was produced? 

Brattin: 

I think there are a number of surprising tidbits I could offer. There on the first page of the manuscript, there are references to Hamlet's ghost that are funny, but a little bit obscure. And I think Dickens thought, no, we don't need this joke here. And blocked that out. I think it's surprising for those who have read the book before to realize that Dickens left out mention of Tiny Tim at the end of the book, on the last page of the story, Dickens says of Scrooge and to Tiny Tim, who did not die. He was a second father. He did this and that and the other. There's no mention of Tiny Tim in the manuscript. He must have seen-- proofs must have come back from the printer. And he thought, oh, I left out Tiny Tim. Got to get that in there. Right? And that's a testament not only, I think, to somebody who looms his large in popular culture now as Tiny Tim could be neglected for a little while. But it also says that it's not really a book about Tiny Tim. Tiny Tim is important because he shed some light on Scrooge and how Scrooge has changed and genuinely become a better and happier person. 

Foskett: 

Scrooge goes through the journey. 

Brattin: 

That's right. That's right. 

Foskett: 

We should take a few moments to look beyond “A Christmas Carol.” Let's talk about what else is here. Where should someone start when they come into the Dickens reading room?

Brattin: 

Well, I think it makes sense to start with what you know and are interested in. So if you have read the Dickens novel, or let's say that you come in and you have not read the Dickens novel, but you've seen the Mr. Magoo or Muppet “A Christmas Carol” adaptations, WPI has an enormously rich collection of adaptations of a Christmas Carol. We are pleased to hold Fred Guida's remarkable collection of adaptations. There's something like 400 works. About half of those pertain to “A Christmas Carol.” We have recordings of adaptations of Dickens from as early as 1901. Audio recordings of adaptations, video tape, video cassette, DVD. And we have reels of film. So there's an Italian neorealist adaptation of “A Christmas Carol.” Those materials are all available for public exploration as well. 

Foskett: 

It’s sort of a nice illustration of how far Dickens has come in popular culture. He's gone through every medium that we have. 

Brattin: 

I think one of the things that I'm excited about that WPI has achieved recently is we've launched something called the Dickens Portal. It's easy to find–if you put into a search engine “WPI Dickens Portal,” it'll come right up. And it's a resource. It's a guide that will lead you to three different large sources of information about Dickens. There's Project Boz. There's introductions to the various collection catalogs. And then there's links to exhibitions that WPI has launched about Dickens. 

Foskett: 

And how long was that in the works? 

Brattin: 

Well, the Project Boz has been in the work since, I believe, 2007. The goal of Project Boz is to provide free, for anyone with an internet connection, high quality digital images, searchable images of all of Dickens' novels as they originally appeared, which means all of Dickens' novels as they appeared in their serial parts with every page, every ad, every illustration. So one can read any one of Dickens's novels as Dickens's original readers in Britain would have read them. This is a project that I'm tremendously excited about, the serial installments of Dickens are the best way to read him. And now anyone can do that with high quality, color, searchable images. 

Foskett: Just think of someone back then eagerly awaiting the next installment. That must have been an exciting time. 

Brattin: 

That's right. That's right. There are stories about people gathered on the docks in New York waiting for the ship to come with the next monthly installment. I think those are powerful stories. I'm not certain that they're factually accurate, but they certainly convey the excitement that people had as they were awaiting the next installment of Dickens' novels. 

Foskett: 

And since we have them here, you could put a modern twist on it with all the binge watching there. We do gulping down a series of television shows in one sitting. You could do the same with the serial installments. 

Brattin: 

Indeed, you could now, but you couldn't then. In WPI, the institution that is home to both of us, operates its undergraduate calendar on a seven-week term. And it's challenging to read long novels for engineering students. Good point. We're engineering undergraduates in a seven-week time. And I've developed a course called Popular Fiction Reading and Installments, where students can take the time to read a long Dickens novel in its monthly serial installments. Rather than having to gobble the novel down in the first week of class, we can talk about the first installment and the second installment and then come back next class session and talk about the third installment and the fourth one. And it lets students recreate in a seven-week period what Dickens's readers experienced over the course of 19 months. 

Foskett: 

Sort of relieving that academic pressure and sort of taking them back to how it was intended at the same time. 

Brattin: 

Right. And it gives us the time to look more closely at the details of Dickens's writing, which certainly repay close attention. 

Foskett: 

What keeps you going with Dickens? You've been a Dickens scholar for most of your career. What still excites you about him? 

Brattin: 

It's the wonderful writing. Every time that I teach Dickens, I reread the novel that I'm teaching, which means that I've read some novels 10, 15, 20 times. And I still discover new things. There's such richness, such depth to the novels. I'm also interested in Dickens's creative process. And that's something that has held my interest for many decades. I was introduced to reading Dickens's manuscripts back in the 1970s. I went to London and read the manuscripts in the Victoria and Albert Museum and have since made a policy of looking around for whatever Dickens manuscripts I can find, teasing out what Dickens originally wrote, what he crossed out. And when I say crossed out, usually scribbled out with thick swirls of ink. But still, you can make out what's underneath there. These things fascinate me, a glimpse into the creative mind of a genius. 

Foskett: 

Talk about your work with the Oxford University press. 

Brattin: 

“The Oxford Edition of Charles Dickens” is now launched and well underway. This is Oxford University Press' scholarly edition of Dickens's works. And that was launched a couple of years ago with the first volume sketches by Boz. My two-volume edition of “Nicholas Nickleby” is the first novel published in the series earlier this year in 2024. Hot on its heels came the “Uncommercial Traveler,” a collection of Dickens's late journalism. And more volumes are, of course, coming. I'm busy working on “A Tale of Two Cities,” which I hope will be available in 2025, if not then in 2026. 

Foskett: 

So Dickens is still getting the treatment after all these years?

Brattin: 

Dickens's novels have never, ever gone out of print and they never, ever will. 

Foskett: Joel Brattin, thank you for joining us. 

Brattin: Absolutely, it was my pleasure. 

Foskett: You can check out the latest WPI news on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube Podcasts. You can also ask Alexa to open WPI. Thanks for listening.