Free Les Standiford by The Man Who Invented Christmas: Charles Dickens's

be edited by him.”
    All of this, said Forster, brought home an inescapable truth: “that publishers are bitter bad judges of an author, and are seldom safe persons to consult in regard to the fate or fortunes that may probably await him.” Certainly, no more forceful proof exists than what ensued between Dickens and Chapman and Hall.
    Informed of his publishers’ response, Dickens was resolute. “Don’t be startled by the novelty and extent of my project,” he wrote back to Forster. “Both startled
me
at first; but I am well assured of its wisdom and necessity.”
    â€œLook upon my project
as a settled thing,
” he told his friend, dismissing the notion of launching a new magazine as an enormous drain on his energy. And he believed that publication of a cheap edition of his work would devalue what they already had achieved: “it would damage me and damage the property,
enormously.
”
    In the end, Dickens did a remarkable thing for a writer of his stature. Bowing to Forster’s advice, he stopped short of breaking off with his publishers altogether, but he was not about to abandon an idea on which he had now irrevocably settled.
    If Chapman and Hall would not agree to publish
A Christmas Carol
under normal terms, then he would entrust it to them “for publication on his own account.” He would be responsible for the costs of the book’s production, which would be deducted from its sales. He would also oversee the book’s design, hire its illustrator, and consult on its advertising. In essence, his publishers—which would receive a fixed commission tied to sales—had become merely his printer. In contemporary terms, then,
A Christmas Carol
was to be an exercise in vanity publishing.
    It was the turning point of Dickens’s career, Forster says, “and the issue, though not immediately, ultimately justified him.” Meanwhile, “Let disappointments or annoyances beset him as they might, once heartily in his work and all was forgotten.” Thoughts of moving to a “cheap and delightful climate, in Normandy or Brittany” were set aside. Dickens had six weeks in which to write and produce
A Christmas Carol
(and there were at least two installments of
Martin Chuzzlewit
due as well).
    â€œI was most horribly put out for a little while,” Dickens wrote to Forster, “but having eased my mind by that note to you, and taken a turn or two up and down the room, I went at it again, and soon got so interested that I blazed away till late last night; only stopping ten minutes for dinner.”

8.
    O f course, as he was writing, Dickens—especially given his recent experience—could not be certain of the reception for his new project. He could only follow his instincts and hope that he was right.
    So he pressed on with the writing of it, though he was sometimes resentful of his other obligations, including that ill-received novel he was committed to. On November 10, he wrote to Forster, “I have been all day in
Chuzzlewit
agonies—conceiving only. I hope to bring forth tomorrow.” But from there he went on to the object closer to his heart: “Will you come here at six? I want to say a word or two about the cover of the
Carol
and the advertising, and to consult you on a nice point in the tale. It will come wonderfully I think.”
    It might be helpful to interject a note here on typical publishing practice of the day. Although publishers, including Chapman and Hall, certainly made the decisions about what they were and were not interested in publishing (and indeed often approached authors rather than the other way around), once an agreement was struck, relatively little editing of a submitted manuscript went on inside the publishing house. That chore was left largely to the writer, though sometimes an “adviser” or unofficial editor such as Forster might take a hand in the process.
    As a glance at the