The classic Victorian tale of the little orphan who dared to ask for ‘more’ retains its heartwarming charm and relevance in our era.
Oliver’s story is full of pathos and excitement, from abandonment in a workhouse to falling in with Fagin’s gang in London’s murky underworld and his eventual rescue by the kindly Mr Brownlow, who is able to reveal Oliver’s true parentage.
Charles Dickens was born in 1812 and grew up in poverty. This experience influenced ‘Oliver Twist’, the second of his fourteen major novels, which first appeared in 1837. When he died in 1870, he was buried in Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey as an indication of his huge popularity as a novelist, which endures to this day.