Oliver Twist

Oliver Twist (1838) is Charles Dickens' second novel. The book was originally published in Bentley's Miscellany as a serial, in monthly installments that began appearing in the month of February 1837 and continued through April 1839. George Cruikshank provided one steel etching per month to illustrate each installment.

Oliver Twist is the first English novel with a child protagonist, and is also notable for Dickens' unromantic portrayal of criminals and their sordid lives. The book's subtitle, The Parish Boy's Progress alludes to Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress and also to a pair of popular 18th-century caricature series by William Hogarth, "A Rake's Progress" and "A Harlot's Progress".

An early example of the social novel, the book calls the public's attention to various contemporary social evils, including the workhouse, child labour and the recruitment of children as criminals. Dickens mocks the hypocrisies of the time by surrounding the novel's serious themes with sarcasm and dark humour. The novel may have been inspired by the story of Robert Blincoe, an orphan whose account of his hardships as a child laborer in a cotton mill was widely read in the 1830's.

Oliver Twist is born into a life of poverty and misfortune in the workhouse of an unnamed town within a 75 mile radius of London. Orphaned almost from his first breath by his mother's death in childbirth and his father's unexplained absence, Oliver is meagerly provided for under the terms of the Poor Law, and spends the first nine years of his life at a "baby farm" in the care of a woman named Mrs. Mann. Along with other juvenile offenders against the poor-laws, Oliver is brought up with little food and few comforts.

Around the time of the orphan's ninth birthday, Mr Bumble, a parish beadle, removes Oliver from the baby farm and puts him to work picking oakum at the main branch-workhouse. Oliver, who toils with very little food, remains in the workhouse for six months, until the desperately hungry boys decide to draw lots; the loser must ask for another portion of gruel. The task falls to Oliver, who at the next meal tremblingly comes forward, bowl in hand, and makes his famous request: "Please, sir, I want some more."

A great uproar ensues. The board of well-fed gentlemen who administer the workhouse, while eating a meal fit for a king, are outraged by Oliver's "ingratitude". Wanting to be rid of this troublemaker, they offer five pounds to any person wishing to take on the boy as an apprentice. A brutal chimney sweep almost claims Oliver, but, when he begs despairingly not to be sent away with "that dreadful man" a kindly old magistrate refuses to sign the indentures. Later, Mr. Sowerberry, an undertaker employed by the parish, takes Oliver into his service. He treats Oliver well, and, because of the boy's sorrowful countenance, uses him as a "mute", or mourner, at children's funerals. His wife, however, takes an immediate dislike to Oliver - primarily because her husband seems to like him - and loses few opportunities to underfeed and mistreat him. He also suffers torments at the hands of Noah Claypole, a bullying and none-too-bright fellow apprentice who is jealous of Oliver's promotion to mute.

One day, in an attempt to bait Oliver, Noah insults the orphan's late mother, calling her "a regular right-down bad 'un". Oliver flies into an unexpected passion, attacking and even besting the much bigger boy. Mrs Sowerberry takes Noah's side, helps him subdue Oliver, and later goads her husband and the Beadle into again beating the young orphan. Alone that night, Oliver finally decides to run away. He wanders aimlessly for a time, until a well-placed tableau sets his feet towards London.