It recounts the story of Ebenezer Scrooge, an elderly miser who is visited by the ghost of his former business partner Jacob Marley and the spirits of Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come.

Dickens had written three Christmas stories prior to the novella, and was inspired following a visit to the Field Lane Ragged School, one of several establishments for London's street children.

He turns away two men seeking a donation to provide food and heating for the poor and only grudgingly allows his overworked, underpaid clerk, Bob Cratchit, Christmas Day off with pay to conform to the social custom.

That night Scrooge is visited at home by Marley's ghost, who wanders the Earth entwined by heavy chains and money boxes forged during a lifetime of greed and selfishness.

The scenes reveal Scrooge's lonely childhood at boarding school, his relationship with his beloved sister Fan, the long-dead mother of Fred, and a Christmas party hosted by his first employer, Mr Fezziwig, who treated him like a son.

A major part of this stave is taken up with Bob Cratchit's family feast and introduces his youngest son, Tiny Tim, a happy boy who is seriously ill.

The silent ghost reveals scenes involving the death of a disliked man whose funeral is attended by local businessmen only on condition that lunch is provided.

The change in circumstances gave him what his biographer, Michael Slater, describes as a "deep personal and social outrage", which heavily influenced his writing and outlook.

[2] On 31 December that year he began publishing his novel Martin Chuzzlewit as a monthly serial;[n 2] it was his favourite work, but sales were disappointing and he faced temporary financial difficulties.

In the episode, a Mr Wardle describes a misanthropic sexton, Gabriel Grub, who undergoes a Christmas conversion after being visited by goblins who show him the past and future.

[12] The tales and essays attracted Dickens, and the two authors shared the belief that returning to Christmas traditions might promote a type of social connection that they felt had been lost in the modern world.

[20] In a fundraising speech on 5 October 1843 at the Manchester Athenaeum, Dickens urged workers and employers to join together to combat ignorance with educational reform,[21] and realised in the days following that the most effective way to reach the broadest segment of the population with his social concerns about poverty and injustice was to write a deeply felt Christmas narrative rather than polemical pamphlets and essays.

[27] Slater says that A Christmas Carol was intended to open its readers' hearts towards those struggling to survive on the lower rungs of the economic ladder and to encourage practical benevolence, but also to warn of the terrible danger to society created by the toleration of widespread ignorance and actual want among the poor.

By 24 October Dickens invited Leech to work on A Christmas Carol, and four hand-coloured etchings and four black-and-white wood engravings by the artist accompanied the text.

[29][n 3] The central character of A Christmas Carol is Ebenezer Scrooge, a miserly London-based businessman,[30] described in the story as "a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner!

[35] According to the sociologist Frank W. Elwell, Scrooge's views on the poor are a reflection of those of the demographer and political economist Thomas Malthus,[36] while the miser's questions "Are there no prisons? ...

[46][n 7] The two figures of Want and Ignorance, sheltering in the robes of the Ghost of Christmas Present, were inspired by the children Dickens had seen on his visit to a ragged school in the East End of London.

[51][n 8] Dickens's biographer, Claire Tomalin, sees the conversion of Scrooge as carrying the Christian message that "even the worst of sinners may repent and become a good man".

[58] From a secular viewpoint, the cultural historian Penne Restad suggests that Scrooge's redemption underscores "the conservative, individualistic and patriarchal aspects" of Dickens's "Carol philosophy" of charity and altruism.

[63] As the result of the disagreements with Chapman and Hall over the commercial failures of Martin Chuzzlewit,[64] Dickens arranged to pay for the publishing himself, in exchange for a percentage of the profits.

"[77] William Makepeace Thackeray, writing in Fraser's Magazine, described the book as "a national benefit and to every man or woman who reads it, a personal kindness.

'"[74] The poet Thomas Hood, in his own journal, wrote that "If Christmas, with its ancient and hospitable customs, its social and charitable observances, were ever in danger of decay, this is the book that would give them a new lease.

[80] The writer and social thinker John Ruskin told a friend that he thought Dickens had taken the religion from Christmas, and had imagined it as "mistletoe and pudding—neither resurrection from the dead, nor rising of new stars, nor teaching of wise men, nor shepherds".

The New Monthly Magazine praised the story, but thought the book's physical excesses—the gilt edges and expensive binding—kept the price high, making it unavailable to the poor.

[84] In 1863 The New York Times published an enthusiastic review, noting that the author brought the "old Christmas ... of bygone centuries and remote manor houses, into the living rooms of the poor of today".

[88] The small profits Dickens earned from A Christmas Carol further strained his relationship with his publishers, and he broke with them in favour of Bradbury and Evans, who had been printing his works to that point.

He capitalised on the success of the book by publishing other Christmas stories: The Chimes (1844), The Cricket on the Hearth (1845), The Battle of Life (1846) and The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain (1848); these were secular conversion tales which acknowledged the progressive societal changes of the previous year, and highlighted those social problems which still needed to be addressed.

[107] Dickens advocated a humanitarian focus of the holiday,[108] which influenced several aspects of Christmas that are still celebrated in Western culture, such as family gatherings, seasonal food and drink, dancing, games and a festive generosity of spirit.

[111][112] The writer James Joyce considered that Dickens took a childish approach with A Christmas Carol, producing a gap between the naïve optimism of the story and the realities of life at the time.

[116] In 1867 one American businessman was so moved by attending a reading that he closed his factory on Christmas Day and sent every employee a turkey,[75] while in the early years of the 20th century Maud of Wales—the Queen of Norway—sent gifts to London's crippled children signed "With Tiny Tim's Love".