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xxii |
INTRODUCTION. |
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should separate me, instantly, from all other periodicals periodically published, and supply a distinct and sufficient reason for my coming into existence. And I would chirp, chirp away in every number until I chirped it up to—well, you shall say how many hundred thousand. . . . Seriously I feel a capacity in this name and notion which appears to give us a tangible starting-point, and a real, denned, strong, genial drift and purpose. . . . But you shall determine. What do you think ?
But objections were advanced which led to much discussion and the consumption of a good deal of time, and finally the Daily News deluge swept the whole plan of the proposed weekly periodical away for a while, and the Cricket idea took other shape. " What do you think," Charles Dickens wrote late in the summer of 1845, "of a notion that has occurred to me in connection with our abandoned little weekly ? It would be a delicate and beautiful fancy for a Christmas book, making the Cricket a little household god—silent in the' wrong and sorrow of the tale and loud again when all went well and happy."
How thoroughly the fancy, and the story which was founded on it, hit the public taste was proved beyond doubt by the success and lasting popularity of the little book. Its sale at the outset doubled that of both its predecessors. In another place he says that more than double the number of the Carol were sold of both the Chimes and the Cricket—so that it is a little doubtful whether it is meant that the Cricket sold double the number of the Chimes, and consequently four times as many as the Carol, or that its sale was double that of the Chimes and the Carol put together. But, however this may have been, the sale was undoubtedly very large indeed.
The story, which was described as "a fairy tale of home," was published, at five shillings, for the author by Messrs. Bradbury and Evans at Christmas, 1845, but bore the date 1846. It made a foolscap octavo volume of one hundred and seventy-four pages, with frontispiece and title engraved on wood after D. Maclise, E.A., and twelve woodcuts by Clarkson Stanfield, E.A., Edwin Landseer, K.A., John Leech, and Richard Doyle. It was without a preface, and was dedicated to Lord Jeffrey in the following terms :—- |
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