Dickensian Gothic: A Christmas Carol. David L Rattigan opens a creaking door on Charles Dickens’s Gothic tale The year was 1843, and English literature had witnessed the zenith of early Gothic horror in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818). On the other side of the Atlantic, Edgar Allen Poe was reimagining the genre in such tales as The Fall of the House of Usher (1839) and The Tell-Tale Heart (1843). And in Britain, Charles Dickens was appropriating the Gothic tradition for his own stories; the conventions of the Gothic were to loom particularly large in late works such as Bleak House (1852) and Great Expectations (1860), but it was in a series of Christmas stories that he first explored the genre fully.
The Chimes (1844), The Cricket on the Hearth (1845), The Battle of Life (1846) and The Haunted Man and the Ghost’s Bargain (1848) are now forgotten by popular culture, but the first, A Christmas Carol (1843), continues to be read by millions and has been the subject of dozens of film adaptations. Horrors of Injustice.
Xmas carol sample answer. Themes. Symbolism. Ignorance and Want. Want and Ignorance. A04 Historical Background and Context. 6 BBC Clips - The Childhood of Charles Dickens. Extracts. GCSE Bitesize: The 19th-century social, historical and cultural setting. Plot Synopsis. GCSEPod.co.uk. Note taking guide. A Christmas Carol. School Radio - A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens - Whole Book. The Online Literature Library.
A Christmas Carol -Study Guide. A Christmas Carol. Litcharts. It is Christmas Eve, seven years since the death of Jacob Marley, the business partner and only friend of Ebenezer Scrooge.
Scrooge is in his counting house, keeping a cruel monopoly on the coal supply and keeping his clerk Bob Cratchit in the cold. Scrooge’s nephew, Fred, makes a visit, but his incessant seasonal merriness aggravates Scrooge, and he says “Humbug!” To Fred’s idea that he spend Christmas dinner at Fred's house. The next visit is from two gentlemen collecting for the poor, but Scrooge believes in keeping the poor in the workhouses and sends them away.