Mugby Junction by Charles Dickens Fiction Classics Literary Historical

Mugby Junction first published in the 1866 Christmas issue of Charles Dickenss weekly magazine All the Year Round. Today many people may not realize the debt they owe to Dickens -- his holiday stories almost single-handedly transformed Christmas from a disreputable holiday known for roughhousing and carousing to the goodwill charity and warmly-remembered traditions that the holiday represents today. As Dickens grew older his fictional Christmases sometimes became far darker than the joyous holiday of A Christmas Carol. The original edition of the Christmas magazine All the Year Round also included ghost stories and tales by other popular writers. Mugby (a thinly-veiled version of Rugby) is a rail station situated in the British midlands. Well-known in the United Kingdom for its description of the unsavory railway refreshment room inspired by Dickens 1965 train accident and a later unpleasant repast the rail station is a home base for the story of Jackson a traveler who wanders into the station alone and forlorn at Christmastime. The kind and not-so-kind people he meets at the station tell tales of the holidays of which the last The Boy at Mugby is the best.