Ol' Fezziwig: A Christmas Prelude

In 2013, on a trip to London, a surprise discovery was made.
In the apartment and museum of the late Charles Dickens, during the refinishing of a writing desk that had been returned to the institution by the family of an admirer believed to have purchased the piece from Dickens in 1843 helping the author to publish A Christmas Carol, a draft of a similar story was found carefully fastened between two panels of a drawer bottom.
After an extensive evaluation of the draft was done by several scholars, it was not quite clear if it was written by Charles Dickens.
The prose and structure of the story are very much in alignment with A Christmas Carol and its language does have a certain tenor to how Dickens wrote and contains actual passages from the original story. The composition, however, was determined not to be of his doing. The stories are similar but have many differences to be a draft of the original book.
The writing desk was the key to the mystery on who theoretically wrote the manuscript. As it was being refurbished, the maker’s mark was revealed after finishing the desk’s hood and was determined that it never was possessed by Charles Dickens but was bought by him, and later sold to the admirer mentioned above after Dickens’ father had passed.
A letter to Dickens, found in some of the author’s papers, expressed that an admirer was grateful for the opportunity to purchase a desk, and that he would treat it with reverence and gave condolences to his father’s passing. If it was the same admirer, no one could tell.
It is possible this desk was bought by Charles for his father’s home that he rented for his father, who was late in life, and Charles wanted his father far from the city.
It was then theorized that John Dickens, Charles’ father, may have written the manuscript.
Always waiting for something to turn up, John Dickens was known to have tried to emulate his son’s success by being a writer. It is believed he thought it an easy profession.
It is still unclear, but it cannot be one hundred percent determined that if John Dickens wrote the manuscript before or after A Christmas Carol, or if he wrote it at all. It is only a theory and must be treated as such. Most of the scholars believed it was written after Charles’ famous story, but they cannot be for sure.
The Charles Dicken’s Museum felt there was not enough evidence the draft could be authenticated, and therefore was returned to the family that had owned the desk. Thankfully, the family gave permission for the manuscript to be published as Ol' Fezziwig: A Christmas Prelude. We hope you enjoy it and determine for yourself if John Dickens was the one to write it, as it may have been or not.