Publication and Reception

Publication::

Dickens's second novel, written in part concurrently with Pickwick. First published in monthly numbers in the new Bentley's Miscellany, published by Richard Bentley, 31 January (February issue) 1837 to March 1839; written mainly at 48 Doughty Street, London. Published in three volumes, 1838, with illustrations by Cruishank. The third edition, with Preface dated Devonshire, March 1841, published Chapman & Hall. First publication in America 1837: first and second hapters only, indluced in the second volume of Tales and Sketches from Bentley's Miscellany (these included various other writings of Dickens, including 'Public Life of Mr. Tulrumble', 'Mudfog Association', etc.), published by Cary, Lea & Blanchard. The entire work was published in 1838 in the American reprint of Bentley's Miscellany, published in New York by William and Jeminma Walker.

Reception: In Oliver Twist Dickens embarked upon a straightforward story line after the multi-plots of Pickwick. It is the first work in which he directly attacks social institutions, in this case the workhouse system of which Oliver is a victim. Dickens's travels as a reporter had shown him much of this particular evil, and he was able at the same time to dwell on the criminal world of London which he delighted to explore. The book is full of youthful melodrama: the villains are incredibly black and the good people incredibly white, but the figure of Fagin is one of Dickens's immortals, touched with a strange sympathy, perhaps because he fascinated his author more than he repelled him. "The Jew," he wrote to Forster, " . . . is such an out and outer that I don't know what to make of him."

Oliver Twist was in general liked, though it did not command the adulation give to Pickwick. There were comments on the "lowness" of the subject, and some Jewish readers though Fagin a libel upon their race.

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