Background on the story:
Technically speaking, A Christmas Carol was published by Chapman & Hall. However in an interesting turn of events, Dickens paid the publishing costs himself.
Sales of Martin Chuzzlewit, also published by Chapman & Hall, had been much less than expected. The owners of the company began to lose faith in marketability of Dickens's work. As a result, they proposed that A Christmas Carol be issued in an inexpensive collection of Dickens's works or possibly as part of a new magazine.
Dickens was adamant that A Christmas Carol be published as a high-quality, stand-alone book.
After discussion between the parties they came to an unusual agreement.
Dickens would fund the publication of A Christmas Carol. He would receive the profits. Chapman & Hall would be paid for the printing costs and receive a fixed commission on the number of copies sold.
Since Dickens was paying for the publishing of the book, he wanted the book done his way. There were issues with the color of the endpapers, the title page and the book binding.
A Christmas Carol was the most successful book of the 1843 holiday season. By Christmas it sold six thousand copies and it continued to be popular into the new year.
Sadly, A Christmas Carol wasn't the moneymaker that Dickens hoped it would be. Sales were good, but the publication costs had been high.
The book is as popular today as it was over 150 years ago. Charles Dickens, through the voice of Scrooge, continues to urge us to honor Christmas in our hearts and try to keep it all the year round.
Source: https://www.charlesdickensinfo.com/christmas-carol/
Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it. And Scrooge's name was good upon 'Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to.
Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.
Mind! I don't mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country's done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a door-nail.
Scrooge knew he was dead? Of course he did. How could it be otherwise? Scrooge and he were partners for I don't know how many years. Scrooge was his sole executor, his sole administrator, his sole assign, his sole residuary legatee, his sole friend, and sole mourner. And even Scrooge was not so dreadfully cut up by the sad event, but that he was an excellent man of business on the very day of the funeral, and solemnised it with an undoubted bargain. The mention of Marley's funeral brings me back to the point I started from. There is no doubt that Marley was dead. This must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to relate. If we were not perfectly convinced that Hamlet's Father died before the play began, there would be nothing more remarkable in his taking a stroll at night, in an easterly wind, upon his own ramparts, than there would be in any other middle-aged gentleman rashly turning out after dark in a breezy spot — say Saint Paul's Churchyard for instance — literally to astonish his son's weak mind.
Scrooge never painted out Old Marley's name. There it stood, years afterwards, above the warehouse door: Scrooge and Marley. The firm was known as Scrooge and Marley. Sometimes people new to the business called Scrooge Scrooge, and sometimes Marley, but he answered to both names. It was all the same to him.
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