Mr. Dickens and His Carol

Mr. Dickens and His Carol is a novel by Samantha Silva, published in 2017 and set in London at the point where Charles Dickens was famous, in debt and entirely out of ideas.

Dickens is not feeling any Christmas spirit. His newest book has been an utter flop, the critics have turned against him, his wife is planning a lavish holiday party for an ever-expanding family, and relatives near and far are asking him for money he does not have. His publishers, who are facing ruin of their own, try to blackmail him into writing a Christmas book to save them all, and he refuses, which leaves him walking the streets of the city at night. On one of those walks, in a square he once loved, he meets a mysterious woman named Eleanor Lovejoy, who may be the muse he needs and who may have purposes of her own.

The novel is a fictional account of the writing of A Christmas Carol, and it treats the book as something its author had to be brought to write rather than as something that arrived fully formed.