Introduction Of Oliver Twist By Charles Dickens

Introduction on Charles Dickens

He was born in 1812, his family were very poor, his father who was a clerk in the Royal Navy based in Portsmouth, when he was five years old his family moved to Chatham which at the time was a big Dockyard.

At the age of nine he moved again but this time it was to London, because his family were so poor they could not afford to send Charles to school so he taught himself.

Charles started work at the age of 11 in a blacking factory helped and taught what to do by a friend named Bob Fagin (who is in Oliver

Twist). As a result of being so poor his father went to debtors prison, because his mother could not afford things she joined him going to prison the bailiffs took away all there possessions.

Charles then went to school as a day boy in Hampstead where he had a 'cane happy' headmaster called Mr Jones.

Charles then got an office job for newspapers and magazines doing news reports from parliament and Law courts, soon after he started writing short stories for magazines, he then died in 1870 at an age of 58.

Oliver Twist was written in 1839 by Charles Dickens and was published in monthly issues in magazines and newspapers. The first time Oliver

Twist was made into a book was in 1850 this was when Charles Dickens was thirty - eight years old. This book was based on his history and about the poor who lived in London. Some characters in the book are from his history such as Fagin who was his old childhood friend or Mr.

Bumble who was Dickens Headmaster.

The Book

Oliver Twist is an orphan who was born in a workhouse. After an unhappy apprenticeship, Oliver runs away to London where he falls in with thieves, headed by Fagin a villainous 'Jew '. Mr Brownlow rescues him but the gang kidnaps him back. Oliver discovers the identity of his parents. The gang that Fagin runs are exposed.

This would be similar to the workhouse Oliver would have spent

He had in his bundle a crust of bread, a coarse shirt, two pairs of stockings and a penny.

Oliver was very small and helpless with a bundle over his shoulder not tasting anything but crusts of bread. After buying a small loaf of bread in the first village he came to, he could hardly crawl the next day. At the bottom of a hill Oliver waited for a stage-coach to arrive, when one finally did the people inside the stage-coach they made him chase after the stagecoach for one penny. However, he did not do well enough and the half pence went back in their pockets this shows that people were not very kind to homeless people. In other towns there were signs up, warning that 'all persons who begged in this district, that they would be sent to jail'. This scared Oliver he was glad to get clean away from those sorts of towns. But a nice turnpike and a 'benevolent old lady' took pity on him her grandson was shipwrecked in some distant country, she gave him what little she could, this stuck in Oliver's heart and helped him overcome what everyone else was doing. This shows that not all people are mean and unfair to the