Oliver Twist: The Parish Boy's Progress

Probably the best-known of all Dickens' works, Oliver Twist was originally published as a serial, and sought to bring the public's attention to various contemporary social evils, including the workhouse, child labour and the recruitment of children as criminals.The novel is full of drama, sarcasm and dark humour even as it reveals the hypocrisies of the time. Oliver Twist is born into a life of poverty and misfortune in a workhouse in an unnamed town (although when originally published in Bentley's Miscellany in 1837 the town was called Mudfog and said to be within 70 miles north 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. Oliver is brought up with little food and few comforts...