Dickens gave his first public reading of
A Christmas Carol in 1853 and
continued to do so until the year of his death in 1870. A version of the popular dramatic
reading, with an illustration by S. Eytinge, Jr., was first published in 1868 by Ticknor and
Fields in Boston.
According
to the British Library, the publication may have come from one of his specially prepared
manuscripts, or it may “have been transcribed on behalf of the publishing firm.”
— Michael Main
Marley was dead to begin with. There was no doubt whatever about that.
4 English variants