Oliver Twist

Novel by Charles Dickens, published serially from 1837 to 1839 in Bentleys Miscellany and in a three-volume book in 1838. The novel was the first of the authors works to depict realistically the impoverished London underworld and to illustrate his belief that poverty leads to crime. Written shortly after adoption of the Poor Law of 1834, which halted government payments to the poor unless they entered workhouses, Oliver Twist used the tale of a friendless child, the foundling Oliver Twist, as a