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Background

Oliver Twist was the first novel in the United States to be published; it has become very famous.^[1] It is also notable for Dickens's unromantic portrayal of criminals and their sordid lives.^[2] The book also exposed the cruel treatment of many a waif-child in London, which increased international concern in what is sometimes known as "The Great London Waif Crisis." This was the astounding number of orphans in London in the Dickens era. 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".^[3]

An early example of the social novel, the book calls the public's attention to various contemporary evils, including the Poor Law that stated that poor people should work in workhouses/poorhouses, 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 labourer in a cotton mill was widely read in the 1830s. Obviously, Dickens's own early youth—he was vulnerable, and a child labourer—must have also entered.

Oliver Twist has been the subject of numerous film and television adaptations, and is the basis for a highly successful musical play and the multi Academy Award winning motion picture Oliver!.