It's Christmas!

Clement Clarke Moore (1779–1863) was an American professor of oriental and Greek literature, as well as divinity and biblical learning, at the General Theological Seminary of the Protestant Episcopal Church, in New York City. He is the author of the yuletide poem “A Visit from St. Nicholas” which became famous as “The Night before Christmas.”

Charles Dickens was born in a little house in Landport, Portsea, England, on February 7, 1812. The second of eight children, he grew up in a family frequently beset by financial insecurity. At age eleven, Dickens was taken out of school and sent to work in London backing warehouse, where his job was to paste labels on bottles for six shillings a week. His father John Dickens, was a warmhearted but improvident man. When he was condemned the Marshela Prison for unpaid debts, he unwisely agreed that Charles should stay in lodgings and continue working while the rest of the family joined him in jail. This three-month separation caused Charles much pain; his experiences as a child alone in a huge city–cold, isolated with barely enough to eat–haunted him for the rest of his life.

George Zarr is an award-winning audio dramatist currently based in Chicago. He is the producer, writer, director, and composer of the Hans Christian Andersen musical The Bell, the four-part comedy Hurry! Hurry! It’s Almost Christmas, the mystery collection Dark of the Moon Inn, and the Western comedy musical serial Hoofbeats in My Heart, all four available from Blackstone Publishing.

Hans Christian Andersen (1805–75) was born in Odense, Denmark. The son of a poor shoemaker, who nonetheless was a great reader, made a toy theater for his son and taught him to notice every natural wonder as they walked in the woods together on Sundays. His father died when he was 11, and it wasn’t until six years later that, with the help of a patron, he finally went to a state secondary school attended by much younger children. There he suffered at the hands of a cruel headmaster, but he acquired an education and was determined to be a writer. He published his first novel and his first fairy tales in 1835; thereafter he wrote over 150 more of these stories which have become classics in many languages.Although he originally addressed his fairy tales to children (and some would maintain he had a streak of childhood in his nature) he insisted they were “for all ages,” and the gentleness and humor that are their characteristics are recognized by everyone.

Jacob Grimm and his brother, Wilhelm, are most famous for their classical collections of folk songs and folktales, especially Children's and Household Tales, which is generally known as Grimm's Fairy Tales. Stories such as "Snow White" and "Sleeping Beauty" have been retold countless times, but the Brothers Grimm first wrote them down. In their collaboration, Wilhelm selected and arranged the stories, while Jacob, who was more interested in language and philology, was responsible for the scholarly work. Jacob was born in Hanau, Germany, in 1785. His father, who was educated in law and served as a town clerk, died when Jacob was young. His mother, Dorothea, struggled to pay the education of the children. With financial help from Dorothea's sister, Jacob and Wilhelm were sent to Kasel to attend the Lyzeum. Jacob then studied law at Marburg. He worked from 1816 to 1829 as a librarian at Kasel, where his brother served as a secretary. Between 1821 and 1822, the brothers raised extra money by collecting three volumes of folktales. With these publications they wanted to show that Germans shared a similar culture and to advocate the unification process of the small independent kingdoms and principalities. In 1829, the brothers moved to Gottingen, where Jacob became librarian and Wilhelm became assistant librarian. In 1835, Wilhelm was appointed professor, but they were dismissed two years later for protesting against the abrogation of the Hanover constitution by King Ernest Augustus. In 1840, the brothers accepted an invitation from the King of Prussia, Frederick William IV, to go to Berlin. There, as members of the Royal Academy of Sciences, they lectured at the university. In 1841 they became professors at the University of Berlin, and worked with their most ambitious enterprise, the Deutsches Worterbuch, a large German dictionary. Its first volume appeared in 1854. The work, which totaled sixteen volumes, was finished in the 1960s. The Grimms made major contributions in many fields, notably in the studies of heroic myth and of ancient religion and law. They worked very close, even after Wilhelm married in 1825. Jacob remained unmarried. Wilhelm died of infection in Berlin on December 16, 1859, and Jacob four years later on September 20, 1863.