Oliver Twist

When Oliver Twist was first published in 1838, it was not fashionable to write novels that showed life in all its miserable reality. But Dickens wanted to shock his readers. He wanted to show criminals as they really were, and to reveal all the horrors and violence that hid in the narrow, dirty backstreets of London. So he gives us the evil Fagin, the brutal Bill Sikes, and a crowd of thieves and robbers, who lie and cheat and steal, and live in fear of prison or the hangman’s rope around their necks.

Dickens also had another purpose. He wanted to show that goodness can survive through every kind of hardship. So he gives us little Oliver Twist – an orphan thrown into a world of poverty and crime, starved and beaten and unloved. He gives us Nancy – poor, miserable, unhappy Nancy, who struggles to stay loyal in a cruel world.

And, as in all the best stories, goodness triumphs over evil in the end.

Oliver Twist

Mrs Mann, in charge of the ‘baby farm’

Mr Bumble, the beadle

Mrs Corney, a widow, in charge of the workhouse

Old Sally, a woman in the workhouse

Mr Sowerberry, an undertaker

Mrs Sowerberry, his wife

Charlotte, the Sowerberrys’ servant

Noah Claypole, a charity-boy

Fagin

The Artful Dodger, one of Fagin’s boys

Charley Bates, another of Fagin’s boys

Bill Sikes, a robber

Nancy, Bill Sikes’ girl

Monks, a mysterious stranger

Mr Brownlow, an old gentleman

Mrs Bedwin, Mr Brownlow’s housekeeper

Mr Grimwig, an old friend of Mr Brownlow’s

Mrs Maylie, a kind lady

Harry Maylie, her son

Rose Maylie, her niece

Dr Losberne, a friend of the Maylies’

Oliver Twist was born in a workhouse, and when he arrived in this hard world, it was very doubtful whether he would live beyond the first three minutes. He lay on a hard little bed and struggled to start breathing.

Oliver fought his first battle without much assistance from the two people present at his birth. One was an old woman, who was nearly always drunk, and the other was a busy local doctor, who was not paid enough to be very interested in Oliver’s survival. After all, death was a common event in the workhouse, where only the poor and homeless lived.

However, Oliver managed to draw his first breath, and then announced his arrival to the rest of the workhouse by crying loudly. His mother raised her pale young face from the pillow and whispered, ‘Let me see the child, and die.’

The doctor turned away from the fire, where he had been warming his hands. ‘You must not talk about dying yet,’ he said to her kindly. He gave her the child to hold. Lovingly, she kissed the baby on its forehead with her cold white lips, then stared wildly around the room, fell back – and died.

‘Poor dear!’ said the nurse, hurriedly putting a green glass bottle back in the pocket of her long skirt.

The doctor began to put on his coat. ‘The baby is weak and will probably have difficulties,’ he said. ‘If so, give it a little milk to keep it quiet.’ Then he looked at the dead woman. ‘The mother was a good-looking girl. Where did she come from?’