The phenomenal success of A Christmas Carol in 1843 emboldened Charles Dickens (1812-1870) to make the publication of a special "Christmas book" an annual tradition. Over the next five years, he published four: The Chimes , The Cricket on the Hearth The Battle of Life , and The Haunted Man . All four sold well, but the critical response was increasingly tepid, and the effort to mix a Christmas book in among his other works was a strain for Dickens. In 1849, the work on David Copperfield made a Christmas book impossible, and Dickens turned from then on to other means to spread the Christmas spirit, primarily by public readings of his one undoubted Christmas classic. This book is in the Deseret Alphabet, a phonetic alphabet for writing English developed in the mid-19th century at the University of Deseret (now the University of Deseret).