Existing comment:
The Greatest Gift: A Christmas Tale
Philip Van Doren Stern wrote in his notes that the idea for The Greatest Gift: A Christmas Tree came to him "complete from start to finish" while he was shaving on the morning of February 12, 1938. He wrote what he deemed a "pretty terrible" first draft a few months later and put it away; he continued to work on it off and on. In April 1943, Stern showed the story to his literary agent, who voiced her concern that a fantasy story would be difficult to sell to magazines. Stern revised the story again and had two hundred copies printed privately as pamphlets. He signed and distributed them as Christmas cards to his friends, family, and two unsigned copies to the Library of Congress with his copyright registration form. |