Oliver Twist

Oliver Twist, or The Parish Boy's Progress, is the second novel by English author Charles Dickens, originally published as a serial from 1837 to 1839 and as a three-volume book in 1838. The story follows the orphan Oliver Twist, who, after being raised in a workhouse, escapes to London where he meets a gang of juvenile pickpockets led by the elderly criminal Fagin, discovers the secrets of his parentage and reconnects with his remaining family. An early example of the social novel, it unromantically portrays the sordid lives of criminals and exposes the cruel treatment of orphans in mid-nineteenth-century England, satirising child labour, domestic violence and the recruitment of children as criminals.