The original manuscript of A Christmas Carol

“Marley was dead.”  Those are the first words of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.

If you haven’t seen it yet, check out this fascinating article at the New York Times about the original manuscript of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. Apparently Dickens did quite a bit of re-writing as he was completing the original manuscript of the novella, and now you can read every detail (and all the details that were cut) here—in a set of digital scans of the original version.  The NYTimes is even sponsoring a contest for whoever can find the most interesting edit that Dickens made.

If you’re in a mood for A Christmas Carol contests, you can visit McCarter’s own contest—and win two free tickets to our production of A Christmas Carol.  Visit here for the full contest details.

If you want to know more about how McCarter got from Dickens’ novella to the adaptation that we use on our stage, you can watch a video with A Christmas Carol adaptor David Thompson or read my article about the final lines of A Christmas Carol.

Posted by Adam Immerwahr, Producing Associate at McCarter Theatre.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 1st, 2009 at 4:17 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.