A Message from the Forties, Being a Story of Protection
Book details
- Title
- A Message from the Forties, Being a Story of Protection
- Publication year listed
- 1910
- Format
- Public domain eBook
- Reading access
- Free online reader; no registration required
- Source record
- View on Archive.org
About this book
A Message from the Forties, Being a Story of Protection
Author: Violet Mond, Baroness Melchett
Year: 1910
British humanitarian and activist Violet Mond, Baroness Melchett, wrote the one-act play A Message from the Forties, Being a Story of Protection as a loose theatrical adaptation of Charles Dickens's novella A Christmas Carol . The playwright became styled Lady Mond when her husband Alfred was created a baronet in 1910, the year that the play was published by the Free Trade Union, a trade association. At the time, Sir Alfred Mond was a Liberal Member of Parliament and Lady Mond was an active political worker and hostess for the Liberal Party, which resulted in Lady Mond altering Dickens's narrative to support the Free Trade Union and to oppose the Tariff Reform League, a protectionist advocacy group. Lady Mond replaces the ghost of Jacob Marley with that of Richard Cobden, a then-deceased Liberal politician and free trade campaigner. The title of the play references the 1840s when Cobden was a Member of Parliament. The cover provides the alternate subtitle "A Free Trade Masque". The National Library of Scotland (NLS) is the holder of the printed copy upon which these images are based. The NLS digitized this play script at the request of the George A. Rawlyk Library of Crandall Unive