The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1934-02-16
The Life of Our Lord
Times TO Publish Dickens Story

Charles Dickens story of Jesus Christ, "The Life of
Our Lord" held in manuscript s~ixty-four years since he
died, is going to be published in The indianapolis Times.
The timeless tale, written by the English novelist for
his children, will appear for the first time in print in
fourteen instalments-14, 900 words-and the first in
stalment will be published in The Indianapolis Times on
March 5, the remainder to follow daily.
Exclusive publication rights for this city were pur-
chased from the United Feature Syndicate, which OBJ
tanned the serial ownership of the manuscript in North
and South America, while the other Scripps-Howard
newspapers acquired similar rights in their territories.
Up and down the country, in these newspapers next
month, the old, old story will be told in the words of a
man whose other words-consider Tiny Tim and Old
Scrooge and Little Nell-have never died.
Charles Dickens wrote them with no view to profit.
He wanted his children to understand the ways and the
significance of the Nazarene. He believed in the power
and glory of the Nazarene and he wanted them to be-
leve.
SO in his own fashion, when they still were little,
and for their eyes alone, he lent his talent to Bethlehem
and Gethsemane.
When he died the manuscript fell to his ~sister-in-
law, Georgina Hogarth. She guarded it until her death,
and then it fell to Dickens sixth child, Sir Henry Field
ing Dickens, with her admonitiOn that it should not be
published so long as any child of Dickens lived.
Just before the Christmas holidays Sir Henry, the
last of the Dickens children, died. He was killed in a
traffic accident. And at last the disposition of the manu-
script-with the public in mind-was laid open.
Sir Henry's widow and his children, through a ma
jority decision, assumed the right to permit its publ
cation.
That was dramatic news in the world of books.
After s~ixty-four years a new, never-printed Dickens
work.
Publishers knew that people the earth over still
were reading Dickens. Libraries proved that, and re-
prints. Now a new book by Dickens, and on a theme
perenniaIly new.
No wonder the bidding for publication rights to that
manuscript was spirited. No wonder it grew acrimonious.
The manuscript itself was so desirable that its value
was hard to fix. The value of the publication rights was
incalculable.
England and America and Europe focused eyes on
those yellow, old pages written away back when the
nineteenth century and the Dickens children were young.
The London Daily Mail finally got them. 1t paid
SIS a word for the right to publish the Il, 900 words.
1t was a great deal more than Dickens ever got for
his other work, although he did command prices called
good in his day. "Pickwick Papers brought hin 5000
pounds sterling, about S15,OO0; "A Christmas Carol"
AGO pounds or $1,000, not counting $500 pounds, or S14,-
900 later accruing, and the American rights to "The
Mystery of Edwin brood" went for 1000 pounds, or
$4,000.
When the Scripps-Howard newspapers learned that
the United Feature Syndicate had the serial rights in
this country, they decided that they would have the
story. They decided that what Charles Dickens wrote
for his children about Christ remains newsstand
literature.
The chapters will be printed in distinctive type I'M
der a distinctive title line; cut out and assembled they
will be, truly, a first edition-a collectors item-of
Dickens last-pubhshed work.
1t will be a New Testament.