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More than 5000 entries on the history, culture and life of Britain (published in 1993 by Macmillan, now out of print)
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Oliver Twist
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; or, the Parish boy's progress (1838)
Novel by *Dickens with illustrations by *Cruikshank, published as a monthly serial in Bentley's Miscellany from February 1837. Oliver's mother dies giving birth to him in the workhouse, where as a child he dares to ask for more gruel, outraging the parish beadle, Mr Bumble (who later observes, at the time of his own downfall, that the *'law is a ass'). Oliver is sucked into London's underworld through a chance meeting with another child, the skilled pickpocket Jack Dawkins, better known as the Artful Dodger.
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The Dodger enrols him in the gang of child thieves run by an old Jew, Fagin; others involved in their operations are Bill Sikes and his girlfriend, Nancy, a prostitute. These are the characters the reader remembers, but there is a separate respectable world (that of Mr Brownlow and Mrs Maylie) to which Oliver turns out to be somewhat improbably connected. To help Oliver, Nancy liaises with this other world and is murdered by Bill Sikes. In the resulting chase Sikes accidentally hangs himself. Fagin ends on the gallows, and Oliver is adopted by Mr Brownlow.
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Dickens aimed for a brutally realistic account of London's slums and criminals, but the appeal of his young thieves has given a more romantic edge to the many adaptations of the book. Outstanding have been the film of 1948, directed by David Lean with Alec Guinness as Fagin and Robert Newton as Bill Sikes; and Oliver! (1960), the stage musical by Lionel Bart (b. 1930).
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