Today Is...A Christmas Carol Published

The Internet Movie Database lists more than 100 versions of Charles Dickens 'A Christmas Carol', including four operas and two ballets and is probably my favourite Christmas film, the 1951 version with Alastair Sim as Scrooge and a very young George Cole as the younger Scrooge is the definitive version in my opinion which isn't bad for a book which was dashed out in six weeks. 
Charles Dickens was suffering from financial problems and his publisher was threatening to reduce his royalties as sales of his books dropped so in October 1843 he sat down and tried to dip into the recent rebirth of Christmas under Queen Victoria and borrowing from his own short story about a man who undergoes a Christmas conversion after being visited by goblins who show him the past and future titled 'The Story of the Goblins Who Stole a Sexton', he reworked it into A Christmas Carol.
Scrooge was based on British MP John Elwes who was famous for his miserly behaviour while the name came from an inscription Dickens saw on a tombstone of Ebeneezer Scroggie while writing the story, Tiny Tim was based on his disabled nephew and a local cheesemonger called Marley provided the name for the first ghost of Scrooge's long dead business partner to visit.
The book was a roaring success but Dickens did not make much money from it mainly because he took legal action against his publisher for making illicit copies which he won but which bankrupt the publisher and further reduced Dickens's small profits from the publication.
One huge faux pas in the book is the confusion around Scrooges sister Fan because the book states that Scrooges mother died giving him life and his father blamed him and his sister died the same way and he blamed the nephew and as his father never allowed him to come home for Christmas holidays, he hated Christmas and thought it all 'humbug' but at the end of the film he comes to the realisation that he was blaming Fred for Fan’s death the same way Ebeneezer's father blamed him for his own mother’s death.
But...Fan was Scrooges younger sister, Dickens himself said when Fan came to collect him from the boarding school: 'a little girl, much younger than the boy, came darting in, and putting her arms about his neck, and often kissing him, addressed him as her 'Dear, dear brother.'
Hmmm...mother died giving birth to older brother which is the background to everything that happens after but somehow manages to have another child and call her Fan.
Maybe we should put it down to Dickens being distracted by being called away to drag a child out the chimney or something midway through writing that scene and try to ignore it.