Trivia - Analysis, A Christmas Carol | A Christmas Carol - Summary, Themes & Characters - Novels PDF Download

Brain Snacks: Tasty Tidbits of Knowledge

Dickens wrote this thing in six weeks, in a mad rush to get it to press before the Christmas market. He was pretty desperate to recoup the losses from Martin Chuzzlewit, and boy did he ever succeed! 

However awesomely this book sold (and yeah, it kicked some major publishing butt), Dickens earned almost nothing from the book sales because he had insisted on such an expensive and lavish book format that there were almost no net profits. Whoops.  

Because there were almost no copyright laws in Victorian England, Dickens's books would be immediately plagiarized and adapted for the theater, often with major changes that would alter the meaning of the original work altogether. And without having to pay him royalties, to boot. In fact, he was so furious about how little control he had over his published work that one of the major successful quests of his life was to campaign for a dramatic overhaul of intellectual property laws in the U.K.