Charles Dickens is a renowned author in Victorian England and the protagonist of the novel. Normally a compassionate, generous, and jovial man, the failure of his beloved novel Chuzzlewit and his financial woes trouble him. They eventually cause him to lash out at his family and friends, causing conflicts in his relationships. Also, while he is more frugal and sensible with money than his father and brother, he is sometimes generous to a fault, especially with his children. He also makes impulsive and problematic decisions, such as meeting with his former love, Maria Beadnell, to gain inspiration for his Christmas book even though he is married and does not love her anymore. He also displays a somewhat unhealthy obsession with Eleanor Lovejoy, even going so far as to stalk her on several occasions. However, although his relationship with Eleanor verges on a romantic infatuation, he remains loyal to his wife Catherine and misses her deeply after she takes the children to Scotland for Christmas.

The Search for Inspiration defines Dickens’s literary and spiritual journey as Eleanor and Timothy Lovejoy come into his life and radically change his outlook. As he writes the first, cynical version of his Christmas book, he struggles to find things to write about and suffers from writer’s block, feeling that he has “no inspiration, no source, no reservoir of words and feelings, no one to prop him up or spur him on” (72).