Page:Works of Charles Dickens, ed. Lang - Volume 31.djvu/13

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"Christmas Stories" of Dickens are entirely distinct from his "Christmas Books." In these earlier fantasies he worked single-handed. The sketches are merely his contributions to the Christmas numbers of his two periodicals, Household Words (1850-1859) and All the Year Round (1859-1871). These journals fulfilled Dickens's old desire to have a miscellany of his own, whose popularity should be helped by that of his name, while the labour would be shared by other writers. These were many and excellent. Some, like Mr. Sala of genial memory, imitated the master; some, like Mrs. Gaskell, worked on their own lines. Dickens devoted to his editorial work much time, and all of his unsparing energy and capacity for business. The great public probably never had better cheap literary papers; the taste for interviews, and photographs of the Queen's dolls, if it existed, was not then "catered for," as people say. The Christmas numbers had a "framework," a very ancient device, and familiar to the Hindoos of remote ages. That framework Dickens himself devised and supplied, while his allies contributed many of the stories which it enclosed. In the first, the old Christmas sentiment prevails. "The Seven Poor Travellers" were wound up and set a-going, in an environment very appropriate. Wassail was introduced, and Dickens freely