According to Michael Redmond, "…”the early novels do not so much foreshadow the late as fore-gossip of them. In this way gossip itself, however seemingly trivial, gains an unlikely new function: it registers an intermediary phase in his creative process, located somewhere between nonexistence and full detail…”

Catherine Burgass writes, “The use of animal metaphors for mechanical or human subjects is a common literary trope. The figurative richness of Dickens’ prose means that such metaphors are extended and expanded in his perennial project to highlight the plight of the underdog...”

Catherine Quirk writes, “…Though written in 1843 for the society of the Hungry Forties, A Christmas Carol is always and always has been a story for an ever-shifting present. Central to all of these adaptations is some form of the charitable message of the tale, or what has come to be known as the quintessentially Dickensian Christmas spirit…”