December 19

In literary history

• 1843Charles Dickens published A Christmas Carol at five shillings and sold all six thousand copies by Christmas Eve. Despite the runaway sales, the production costs ate most of the profit. Scrooge's reformed Christmas goose has been on every table since.

Writers born on December 19

• Italo Svevo (1861),
• José Lezama Lima (1910)

The Daily Canon for December 19

The Sickness Unto Death by Søren Kierkegaard (1849).