Our Friends Christmas Party takes place this year on Thursday 8 December! Dr Christine Corton will be joining us in the Catalogue Hall for a festive talk, and Rare Books Librarian Will Hale will be curating a display of Dickensian material from our Rare Books collection. Drinks and mince pies will be served.
Charles Dickens: The Man who Invented Christmas?
A Christmas Carol is now over 175 years old. Written in 1843, it is certainly the most well known of Charles Dickens’s works. But to quote one of the most recent of film versions, Dickens was not the man who invented Christmas or even as he himself said, ‘the inventor of this sort of story’. Dr Corton evaluates Dickens’s contribution to celebrating Christmas, what preceded him and offers a suggestion as to the best filmed version of Dickens’s most famous Christmas tale.
Dr Christine L Corton worked for many years in publishing houses including Hamish Hamilton and Penguin. She has been a Senior Member of Wolfson College since 2010. Her book London Fog: The Biography, published in 2015 by Harvard University Press, was paperbacked in 2018 and was also published in Chinese. Her new book is a Cultural History of Divorce.
Location: Hosted in-person in the Catalogue Hall at Cambridge University Library.
Registration: RSVP here. Spaces are limited and registration closes at 10AM on Friday 2 December.
Accessibility: Step-free access with slight gradient; narrowest point into the building is 82.5cm; accessible toilet; baby changing facilities; accessible parking. Please email events@lib.cam.ac.uk if you have any questions about accessibility for this event.
Date: Thursday 8 December