Lots of people were published in serialized form, as far as his reputation it was varied, most of his bad reputation was because of critics not liking the later novels. Certainly a lot of English writers had problems with him, and also American writers, but I've always put that somewhat down to jealousy. Russian writers were quite taken with him, Dostoevsky had a pretty high opinion.

So it's true that he had a variable reputation until the 1940s, but I'm not sure if it was due to a longing for saner times and not just the typical time for reappraisal some generations after a popular writer's death. If you think about it he died in 1870, so 70 years before his becoming more critically revered. Quite reasonable.

Dickens was a serious social reformer though, not just providing comfort food. The point of "Oliver Twist" was to make people angry at the state of orphanages, "David Copperfield" at the idea of debtors' prisons, and even "A Christmas Carol" had a lot to say about how abusive bosses could be in the era before mandatory holidays.

This may get me some anger but I always found Scrooge to be a very sympathetic character. He starts off as a hopeful boy who just wants to spend some time at Christmas with his family and is shipped off to work as it is his time to do so. Gets dumped hard by his GF on Christmas, for she thinks he only thinks of money when he just wants to do right by her. His only friend died on Christmas. So by the time we see him he sees Christmas as a 'humbug' or trick. He is crazy rich yet spends none of it not even on himself. He is always looking for someone to play a trick on him. So when his nephew shows up and says 'come to Christmas dinner' he treats it with suspicion and blows him off hard. It takes the ghosts to show him that while some people are terrible most are just trying to get by and that his 'terrible' Christmases were mostly by his own hand. Their message share yourself with others for you do not have much time left. He gets the point. He even plays a bit of a 'humbug' on his fellow co-worker the next day when he gives him a raise.

I think this is pretty much the standard interpretation of Scrooge, those who know him best - Bob Cratchit, Fred (Scrooge's nephew), and Belle (his former fiance) - all feel pity for him.

>his novels were published in serialised form

So was Tolstoy.

War and Peace is a soap opera, but has some good one-liners.

War and Peace and Crime and Punishment were also both originally as serials. It was pretty common back then. I don't think serialization instantly makes a book pulp fiction.

The serialization format still shows when you read them today, but many of the quality books today are written like screen plays. I've not read enough from that time to know if the format that I identify as serialization was apparent in other books.