Maryanne Grebenstein's manuscript of Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol"

It took Maryanne Grebenstein over three years to hand letter the 29,000 words contained in Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. Please join Maryanne as she discusses the plan, the process, the ups and downs, and the surprises she encountered while creating her manuscript.

“Creating a one-of-a-kind manuscript containing 143 pages of completely hand-lettered text can be considered nothing short of a labor of love. And for me, that’s exactly what this project was. I have always loved this story and had in mind that someday I would like to create a hand-lettered manuscript of it.

“Several years ago, I learned that The Morgan Library in New York (the owner of Charles Dickens’ original manuscript) had published a little book containing a facsimile of the manuscript alongside a transcription of it. Perfect! I could use Dickens’ actual words – in the raw – to create my manuscript. My hope was to keep this as close to Dickens’ voice as possible, so I transcribed it verbatim. I began working on it in March 2016 and completed it in January 2021.

“Since there are over 29,000 words in the book, I knew that most of the manuscript would be spreads of all black text. And I did not want to use traditional illustrations in my manuscript (no images of Marley’s face in Scrooge’s door knocker for this project!). I wanted to illustrate with words. I selected passages from the text that I thought were particularly poignant or meaningful and highlighted that text by standing it on a page all its own with color and gold decoration to emphasize its meaning.”

Maryanne Grebenstein is a professional calligrapher and owner of The Abbey Studio in Marblehead, MA (www.theabbeystudio.com). She studied under Sheila Waters, Jeanyee Wong, Robert Boyajian, and other notable calligraphers. She teaches workshops in calligraphy, manuscript gilding, and layout in her Marblehead studio/shop. She is a former teacher at North Bennet Street School (www.nbss.edu), and a former Adjunct Professor at Massachusetts College of Art (www.massart.edu). She is the author of Calligraphy: A Course in Hand Lettering and Calligraphy Bible, both published by Watson-Guptill.