A Christmas Carol: Overview

• Who was Charles Dickens?

  Charles Dickens was a 19th-century novelist and he is regarded as one of the most famous British authors of all time.
• Dickens was the author of 15 novels, 5 novellas and hundreds of stories and essays. He also edited a weekly journal for 20 years. He is particularly renowned for his stark portraits of poverty and the suffering of the masses in Victorian London during the Industrial Revolution. His work clearly demonstrates his consciousness of and commitment to social justice and his writing mixed social criticism with animated representations of characters using both humour and satire. While many of his works can be seen to contain idealised characters, Dickens uses them to underscore the terrible living and working conditions endured by so much of the population during this period. 
• Like many of Dickens’s other works, A Christmas Carol was written as a piece of social commentary. It is an allegorical tale of redemption written in response to the appalling social conditions of Victorian England. It is an exploration of the themes of poverty, family, transformation and redemption. For a more detailed summary, please see A Christmas Carol: Plot Summary page.
• A Christmas Carol is a novella composed of five staves (chapters) and it is set in mid-19th-century London. It narrates the story of Ebenezer Scrooge, an elderly miser, who is visited by the ghost of his former business partner Jacob Marley and three spirits: the spirit of Christmas Past, Christmas Present and Christmas Yet to Come. Through their valuable lessons, the spirits enable Scrooge to be transformed into a charitable philanthropist. His journey of transformation from a cruel miser to a benevolent and kind man conveys Dickens’s message that everyone has the ability to show compassion and kindness to others, regardless of their social position.