'Shadowing Dickens'

Here's a special Christmas treat! The Edmonton Journal is running a new serialized novel about the writing of A Christmas Carol. In Shadowing Dickens by Rick McConnell, Charles Dickens and the orphan Alfy Wickfield (wink, nudge) "explore the foggy streets and dark alleys of London in search of the true heart of the classic Christmas tale."

The tale started running December 6, and a new installment will be published every day until Christmas Eve. All installments, plus an interview with McConnell about his story, can be found here. (And there's another interview here.) Enjoy!

Comments

[Nibs]

Am I the recipient of that "wink, nudge", Gina? XD

[molly]

Thank you so much for posting this! I am very excited to start reading Shadowing Dickens and keeping up with each daily writing throughout the Christmas season.

[Gina]

Well, all fans of Agnes are, let's say! ;-)

[Christy]

Who's Alfy Wickfield?

[Gina]

A fictional character in the story. We were just remarking on how the story's author had paid a little tribute to "David Copperfield" by using that last name. :-)

[Christy]

I have not yet read "David Copperfield." I'm saving it for last, in the hopes of being able to commemorate actually getting past the first chapter.

[Stephen Sakellarios]

Charles Dickens wasn't the author of "A Christmas Carol." He hurriedly revised a manuscript he had been given by Mathew Franklin Whittier, younger brother of poet John Greenleaf Whittier, in Boston. The original had been written by Mathew and his wife, Abby Poyen, probably in 1838. I have a great deal of evidence supporting this theory--including, for starters, that there is a record of Dickens thanking Mathew for a letter, later in 1842; and that Mathew was personal friends with Oliver Wendell Holmes, and hence would have been invited to meet Dickens in Boston. I have also have a number of Mathew and Abby's other works, which are similar to the "Carol." The best evidence is that this story contains genuine occult teachings, which Dickens had no respect for, subtitling the book "A Ghost Story of Christmas."

[Gina Dalfonzo]

Well, that's a new one . . . :-)

[Anna]

Stephen Sakellarios is busy spreading this rumor across the internet. The evidence appears to be that Mr Sakellarios, an ardent spiritualist, claims to be a re-incarnation of Whittier and therefore "knows" that his alter ego handed the manuscript to Dickens on his visit to America. Apparently, by the same reasoning, Whittier was also the real author of some of Edgar Allan Poe's works. And also some of those by victorian poetess Elizabeth Barrett Browning ... and so on and so on. Readers can form their own conclusions.

[Stephen Sakellarios]

Anna's comments employ inflammatory language: "spreading a rumor," "knows" in quotation marks, "ardent spiritualist," "claims," etc. M.F. Whittier was an unknown genius whose work was behind the fame of several Victorian authors. The simple explanation is not that I'm imagining these things to puff up my ego, but that because this author remained deeply incognito, historians simply missed him and attributed his work to a slew of other authors--some of whom achieved fame, some of whom didn't. I have uncovered 24 instances in which M.F. Whittier's work has been mistakenly attributed to other authors. On a few occasions he gave permission; in some instances, it developed by rumor, or by mistaken assumptions by later scholars. M.F. Whittier's literary career spanned 54 years. He was prolific and highly original, and almost all of this work was published anonymously under various pseudonyms. As Anna says, read my work and form your own conclusions.

As for reincarnation, it has been proved by Dr. Ian Stevenson and colleagues. Mainstream scientists simply have stubbornly refused to sign off on it.

[Gina]

Stephen, I'm aware that you go around the Internet proclaiming your speculations and wishes as fact. You will not do that here. Any further such comments will be considered spam and discarded.

[Anonymous]

Ended up here because I went down a rabbit hole following Stephen's claim posted verbatim wherever he finds people talking about Christmas Carol.

To Gina:
I appreciate you coming down on Stephen's whimsies parading as fact. He might be able to duplicate the language of academia, but he's far from a balanced researcher.