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of critics have observed that in Dickens’s settings, things often have more life in them than the characters. The settings are vivid, active agents, bursting with energy—they seem ready to make things happen. The characters, on the other hand, are either stock male and female leads or machinelike assemblages of repetitive gestures, phrases, and attitudes that they are doomed to repeat every time they appear. Are these critics being fair? Does Oliver Twist contain any settings that seem to you particularly powerful or effective? How effective are the characters in Oliver Twist?

3. Is there any sense in which it would be accurate to call Dickens “realistic”?

4. In 1883 Anthony Trollope described Dickens as “probably the most popular novelist of any time.” How would you account for this popularity? Do you approve of it? Identify some features of Oliver Twist that may account for the novel’s wide appeal.

5. Does Oliver Twist still appeal to modern audiences, or have changes in tastes and values made the novel seem irrelevant and old-hat?

FOR FURTHER READING

Biography

Ackroyd, Peter. Dickens. New York: HarperCollins, 1990. The best modern biography; a fascinating combination of scholarly research and imaginative insight.

Forster, John. The Life of Charles Dickens. 1872-1874. New York: Doubleday, Doran 1928. By Dickens’s friend; still the classic biography.

Johnson, Edgar. Charles Dickens: His Tragedy and Triumph. 1952. Revised and abridged, 1977. New York: Penguin Books, 1986.

Kaplan, Fred. Dickens: A Biography. 1988. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998.

Wilson, Angus. The World of Charles Dickens. New York: Viking, 1970. Places Dickens’s work in a biographical and social-historical context.

General Background

Davis, Paul. The Penguin Dickens Companion. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1999.

Epstein, Norrie. The Friendly Dickens. New York: Viking, 1998. A light-hearted and accessible introduction.

Pool, Daniel. What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew: From Fox Hunting to Whist: The Facts of Daily Life in Nineteenth-Century England. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993. A fascinating read, fresh and informative.

Critical Studies

Butt, John, and Kathleen Tillotson. Dickens at Work. 1957. London, New York: Methuen, 1982. Provides useful insights into Dickens’s compositional methods.

Carey, John. The Violent Effigy: A Study of Dickens’ Imagination. London: Faber and Faber, 1973. Stimulating and perceptive; highly recommended.

Chesterton, G. K. Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens. 1911. Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1966. A classic.

Chittick, Kathryn. Dickens and the 1830s. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990. A detailed account of Dickens’s early literary influences.

Collins, Philip. Dickens and Crime. 1962. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994. A fascinating background to the criminal world in Oliver Twist.

Gissing, George. Charles Dickens. 1898. Reprint: Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1966. A classic appreciation by a Victorian novelist.

House, Humphry. The Dickens World. London: Oxford University Press, 1941.

Leavis, F. R., and Q. D. Leavis. Dickens the Novelist. London: Chatto and Windus, 1970.

Manning, Sylvia. Dickens as Satirist. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971.

Marcus, Steven. Dickens: From Pickwick to Dombey. New York: Basic Books, 1965. Relates Dickens’s novel to other genres and to his childhood experience.

Miller, D. A. The Novel and the Police. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. Contains a provocative reading of Oliver Twist based on the writings of Michel Foucault.

Miller, J. Hillis. Charles Dickens: The World of His Novels. 1958. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1969.

Additional Works Cited in the Introduction

Bettelheim, Bruno. The Uses of Enchantment. New York: Vintage Books, 1977.

House, Humphry. Introduction. In Oliver Twist. Oxford Illustrated Edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1949.

Slater, Michael. Introduction. Oliver Twist. Everyman’s Library. London: Dent, 1992.

Tillotson,