Oliver Twist (1838) is Charles Dickens' second novel. The book was originally published in Bentley's Miscellany as a serial, in monthly installments that began appearing in the month of February 1837 and continued through April 1839. George Cruikshank provided one steel etching per month to illustrate each installment. Oliver Twist is the first English novel with a child lead character and is also notable for Dickens' unromantic portrayal of criminals. An early example of the social novel, the book calls the public's attention to various contemporary social evils, including the workhouse, child labour and the recruitment of children as criminals.
	The novel may have been inspired by the story of Robert Blincoe, an orphan whose account of his hardships as a child laborer in a cotton mill was widely read in the 1830s.

Oliver Twist has been the subject of numerous film and television adaptations, and is the basis for a highly successful British musical, Oliver!.

The Author

Charles John Huffam Dickens

Charles John Huffam Dickens (7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870), pen-name "Boz", was the foremost English novelist of the Victorian era, as well as a vigorous social campaigner. Considered one of the English language's greatest writers, he was acclaimed for his rich storytelling and memorable characters, and achieved massive worldwide popularity in his lifetime. The popularity of Dickens' novels and short stories has meant that none have ever gone out of print. Dickens wrote serialised novels, which was the usual format for fiction at the time, and each new part of his stories would be eagerly anticipated by the reading public. Charles Dickens was born in Landport, Portsmouth, Hampshire, the second of eight children to John Dickens (1786–1851), a clerk in the Navy Pay Office at Portsmouth, and his wife Elizabeth Dickens (née Barrow, 1789–1863) on February 7, 1812. When he was five, the family moved to Chatham, Kent. When he was ten, the family relocated to 16 Bayham Street, Camden Town in London. Although his early years seem to have been an idyllic time, he thought himself then as a "very small and not-over-particularly-taken-care-of boy". He talked later in life of his extremely poignant memories of childhood and his continuing photographic memory of people and events that helped bring his fiction to life. His family was moderately wealthy, and he received some education at the private William Giles' school in Chatham. However, this time of prosperity came to an abrupt end when his father, after spending too much money entertaining and retaining his social position, was imprisoned at Marshalsea debtors' prison. When he was 12-year-old Dickens began working 10 hour days in a Warren's boot-blacking factory, located near the present Charing Cross railway station. He earned six shillings a week pasting labels on the jars of thick polish. This money paid for his lodging in Camden Town and helped support his family On 9 June 1870, he died at home at Gad's Hill Place. Contrary to his wish to be buried in Rochester Cathedral, he was buried in the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey. The inscription on his tomb reads: "He was a sympathiser to the poor, the suffering, and the oppressed; and by his death, one of England's greatest writers is lost to the world."