has told these vividly and picturesquely, if not exactly consistently.
As a reader, Dickens stood as preëminently to the fore as when posing as a writer. His phenomenal success on the platform is given in detail in a volume written by George Dolby, who accompanied him and managed his American tour. The mental and physical strain was such that in fifteen years of combined editorial, literary, and reading labours, it left him attenuated and finally curtailed his brilliant work.
What the readings really did accomplish was to increase and firmly assure the permanence of his already wide-spread fame.
"Martin Chuzzlewit" had begun to appear in shilling parts in 1843, and at that time was considered by the novelist to be by far the best work he had yet written. "Dombey and Son" followed, and afterward "David Copperfield," to which Dickens transferred his affections from "Chuzzlewit." This new "child of fancy," as he called it, was so largely autobiographical as to be accepted by many as being a recounting of his own early struggles as a poor boy in London, and his early literary labours. He himself said: "I seemed to be sending a part of myself into the shadowy world."
While "Chuzzlewit" was appearing in serial form, that masterpiece perhaps of all Dickens' shorter stories, "A Christmas Carol,"—the first of the "Christmas Stories,"—appeared.
This earned for its author the sobriquet, "The Apostle of Christmas."
Its immediate popularity and success was, perhaps, influenced by the following endorsement from Thackeray:
"It seems to me a national benefit, and to every man or woman who reads it a personal kindness."
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