Oliver Twist is a novel by the English author Charles Dickens that tells the story of a mistreated orphan. It was first published in illustrated monthly installments in the magazine Bentley’s Miscellany between 1837 and 1839 and appeared in book form in 1838. Oliver Twist was Dickens’s second full-length novel and his first sustained work of social criticism. His first full-length novel was The Pickwick Papers (1836-1837).
Oliver Twist realistically portrays the effects of poverty and the lure of crime in early Victorian England after the nation’s notorious Poor Law of 1834. The law restricted charity and established institutions called workhouses for the poor and underemployed. Oliver’s adventures in and out of London link poverty to a variety of social ills, especially to crime.
Oliver Twist, the hero of the novel, is an orphan who was born in a workhouse in an unnamed town north of London. At the age of 9, he returns to the workhouse, which is run by a beadle (minor parish official) named Bumble. The man treats Oliver and the other children cruelly. Oliver is apprenticed to Mr. Sowerberry, an undertaker. Oliver runs away and unintentionally becomes part of a gang of thieves, headed by Fagin. The members of the gang include some of Dickens’s most famous characters, including the evil Bill Sikes, his sympathetic girlfriend Nancy, and a young pickpocket called the Artful Dodger. One of the pickpocket victims, the kindly Mr. Brownlow, manages to rescue Oliver for a time, but the gang recaptures him.
A mysterious and sinister character called Monks now appears and seems to want Oliver to remain permanently with Fagin’s gang. Compelled to take part in a burglary, Oliver is wounded. He is taken to the countryside in the care of Mrs. Maylie and a woman called Rose. Later, Nancy tells Rose that Monks knows who Oliver’s parents were and wants to prevent Oliver from learning about his background. She also hints at some relationship between Oliver and Rose. An inquiry is begun, but when the thieves find out that Nancy has helped Oliver, Bill Sikes murders her. The police and an angry crowd pursue Sikes, and he accidentally kills himself while trying to escape. The rest of the gang is arrested, and Fagin is executed. Monks confesses that he is Oliver’s half-brother and that he has tried to ruin him to keep all their father’s property. Rose is Oliver’s aunt.
At the end of the novel, Mr. Brownlow adopts Oliver and educates him in a village setting far from the filthy streets of London. Monks dies in prison abroad in America, and Mr. Bumble, the beadle, ends up poor, living in the workhouse where previously he was overseer.
See Dickens, Charles.
