Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens

Oliver Twist is a novel written by Charles Dickens (1812-1870), a man who had a difficult life. He had worked since he was a child and he had no money. He gave Oliver , the protagonist, those characteristics.

The story is about a child, whose mother had died, that was sent to a workhouse. Oliver was an innocent and pure boy. When he was eleven, he was tried to be sold from the workhouse as an apprentice, but he escaped from there. In his way to London, he met a boy called Artful Dodger and then ended up with Fagin, the leader of a gang of thieves, who taught children how to steal.
The story of the orphan Oliver, who runs away from the workhouse only to be taken in by a den of thieves, shocked readers when it was first published. Dickens's tale of childhood innocence beset by evil depicts the dark criminal underworld of a London peopled by vivid and memorable characters — the arch-villain Fagin, the artful Dodger, the menacing Bill Sikes and the prostitute Nancy. Combining elements of Gothic Romance, the Newgate Novel and popular melodrama, in Oliver Twist Dickens created an entirely new kind of fiction, scathing in its indictment of a cruel society, and pervaded by an unforgettable sense of threat and mystery.