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Which miser makes the most?

The economics of Ebenezer Scrooge

By P.K.

LONDON, September 1843: a peculiar little journal called The Economist is published for the first time. Meanwhile, less than a mile away, a 31-year-old writer, Charles Dickens, faces mounting debts and his wife is expecting their fifth child. He begins writing Christmas stories in an attempt to ease the financial strain. On December 19th "A Christmas Carol" appears and introduces to the world one of literature's most notorious misers, Ebenezer Scrooge. The initial run of 6,000 copies—financed by the author himself—sells out by Christmas eve. (It takes The Economist until 1920 to match similar circulation figures.)

Dickens's 66-page novella is credited with popularising many aspects of the holiday (including the very phrase "Merry Christmas!"). The story has since sold millions of copies and inspired myriad adaptations in print and on the screen, most recently Disney's 2009 computer-animated version, in which Scrooge was voiced by Jim Carrey. But who is the top-earning Ebenezer? To mark the 200th anniversary celebration of Dickens’s birth in 1812, we have charted Amazon’s sales of every "A Christmas Carol" adaptation available on DVD over the past two years to see which one piled up the most cash.

Perhaps surprisingly, despite having the advantage of being at the forefront of public consciousness, the 2009 adaption still only manages fourth place, dwarfed by the appeal of a cockney and a fabric frog.

What of Dickens himself? Earlier this year, a survey by the BBC and Interbrand declared Dickens to be worth £280m ($455m) annually to the British economy. Not a bad return for a down-on-his-luck writer trying to scrape together the cash for a family Christmas 169 years ago. Surely even Marley’s ghost would approve.

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