“Classic” Oliver Twist or the Parish Boy's Progress

Oliver Twist(1838)is Charles Dickens'secondnovel.The book was originally published inBentley's Miscellany as a serial,in monthly installments that began appearing in themonth of February 1837 and continued throughApril 1839,originally intended to form part ofDickens’serial The Mudfog Papers.George Cruik shank provided one steel etching per month to is ustrate each installment.Oliver Twist is the first novel in the English language to center throughout on a child protagonist and is also notable for Dickens'unromantic portrayal of criminals and their sordid lives.The book’S subtitle,The ParishBoy's Progress,alludes to Bunyan’s TheHlgrim'sProgress andalsoto apairofpopular18th-century caricature series by William Hogarth,A Rake's Progress and A Harlot's Progress.

AMONG other public buildings in a certain town,which for many reasons it will be prudent tO refrain from mentioning.and to which 1will assign no fictitious name,there is one anciently common tO mosttowns,great or small tO wit,a workhouse;and in this workhouse wasborn;on a day and date which I need not trouble myself to repeat,inasmuch as it can be 0f no possible consequence to the reader,inthis stage of the business at a11 events;the item of mortality whosename is prefixed to the head of this chapten For a 10ng time after it was ushered into this world of sorrow andtrouble,by the parish surgeon,it remained a matter of considerable doubt whether the child would survive tO bearany name at all in which case it is somewhatmore than probable that these memoirs would never have appeared;or,if they had,that being comprised within a couple of pages,they wouldhave possessed the inestimable merit of beingthe most concise and faithful specimen of biograph$extant in the literature of any age or country.