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Visit us at to read the full video transcript and our study guide for this classic novel, which includes a full list of characters, themes, and much more. Oliver Twist, by Charles Dickens, is a novel set in 19th-century Victorian England. A young-orphan boy is raised in a workhouse outside of London and is eventually taken in by thieves. The novel critiques the unjust consequences of the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834, which took away the rights of citizenship from paupers and assigned them to workhouses. Oliver is born in a workhouse to an unknown mother who dies in childbirth. He is first taken to a terrible orphanage, but when he is nine, he is sent back to the workhouse, where all the boys suffer harsh treatment and near starvation. One day, the boys draw straws to choose who will ask for more food. When Oliver loses, he must beg for “more” after his first serving of gruel and is banished as a result. He is sent to apprentice with an undertaker n
