60 Fun Facts About Oliver Twist

Oliver Twist was which of Charles Dickens's novels?

It followed The Pickwick Papers and was serialised in a monthly magazine from 1837 to 1839 under his pen name Boz.

What was the novel's alternative title?

It nods to Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress and to Hogarth's satirical print series A Rake's Progress and A Harlot's Progress.

In which magazine was the novel serialised in monthly instalments?

The magazine's owner Richard Bentley published the book version, with 24 steel plates, six months before the serial finished.

Which artist provided one steel etching for each monthly instalment?

The 1948 film's Fagin make-up, prosthetic nose included, was modelled on his drawings.

Under what pseudonym was the book first published?

Dickens had used it for his Sketches by Boz; Phiz was the nickname of his illustrator Hablot Browne.

What punishment follows Oliver's request for more?

He is beaten in front of the other boys three times a week, then offered as an apprentice to anyone who will pay to take him.

What does Oliver famously ask the workhouse master for?

The boys draw lots after six months of starvation rations and Oliver loses; the request causes an uproar and gets him sold as an apprentice.

Which pompous parish official flogs Oliver and later marries the Widow Corney?

The beadle and his wife end the novel as inmates of the very workhouse they once ran.

To what trade is Oliver apprenticed after leaving the workhouse?

Mr Sowerberry takes him on; Oliver attends a pauper's funeral and sees a whole family crammed into one miserable room.

Which fellow apprentice insults Oliver's dead mother and provokes him into a fight?

He later robs his master, flees to London with the maid Charlotte and joins Fagin's gang as a spy.

What is the real name of the Artful Dodger?

He is caught in the end over a trifling theft and, the novel implies, transported to Australia.

What does Fagin train orphan boys to be?

He is a 'kidsman' in the slang of the day, and is thought to be based on a real London fence.

Which real London criminal is Fagin widely believed to be based on?

Solomon was a fence at the centre of a famous arrest, escape and recapture, and some accounts describe him training child thieves.

Roughly how many times is Fagin called 'the Jew' in the first 38 chapters of the original edition?

Dickens cut many of these references in later editions after complaints, notably from Eliza Davis, wife of the man who bought his London house.

Whose handkerchief is stolen in the theft that gets Oliver arrested?

The kindly gentleman takes the boy home and notices that he resembles a woman in a portrait on his wall.

Before which magistrate is Oliver tried for the theft?

In the 1968 film the magistrate was played by Hugh Griffith, an Oscar winner for Ben-Hur.

Which brutal robber is Nancy's abusive lover?

His dog Bull's-eye shares his 'faults of temper' and dies immediately after his master.

What is the name of Sikes's dog?

Its scars are read as an emblem of its master's self-destructiveness; Sikes even tries to drown it once the police describe him as a man with a dog.

What goes wrong during the burglary Fagin forces Oliver to join?

He ends up nursed by the very household he was sent to rob.

Which mysterious man plots with Fagin to keep Oliver from learning his parentage?

He turns out to be Oliver's half-brother, hoping to steal his share of their inheritance; he dies in an American prison.

What items belonging to Oliver's dead mother do Monks and the Bumbles dispose of?

They had been stolen from her body after she died giving birth in the workhouse.

To whom does Nancy secretly pass information to help Oliver?

Rose passes it on to Oliver's protector; Nancy still refuses to betray Sikes or Fagin, and pays for the meetings with her life.

Who follows Nancy on Fagin's orders and reports her secret meetings?

Fagin twists the report so that Sikes believes Nancy has informed on them, which she has actually refused to do.

How does Sikes die?

A vision of Nancy's staring eyes makes him lose his balance; the 1948 film changed it so a policeman's shot leaves him dangling.

What relation is Miss Rose to Oliver?

She marries and enjoys a long life; her sweetness is often linked to Dickens's grief for his young sister-in-law Mary Hogarth.

Where do Oliver and his protector visit Fagin the day before his execution?

The condemned man refuses to pray but reveals where the papers proving Oliver's identity are hidden.

What becomes of Oliver at the end?

Meanwhile the Bumbles lose their posts and end up as workhouse inmates themselves.

Which harsh 1834 legislation is the novel's chief political target?

Dickens mixes grim realism with satire on the workhouse system they created.

Which real orphan's account of child labour in a cotton mill may have inspired the novel?

His memoir was widely read in the 1830s; a workhouse boy named Peter Tolliver may have lent Oliver his name.

What object is Fagin holding when he first appears in the novel?

Standing over a fire, he looks devilish, and he refuses to pray on his last night; critics read him as a satanic figure.

What did Dickens call Nancy in his 1841 preface, which led readers to assume she is a sex worker?

The novel itself never says so directly, and some think he meant only a woman living outside respectable society.

What small stolen item finally gets the Artful Dodger arrested?

Charley Bates laments that the master pickpocket should be 'booked for a passage out' over so trifling a theft.

Who plays the grown-up Dodger, a naval surgeon in 1850s Australia, in Hulu's The Artful Dodger (2023)?

Thomas Brodie-Sangster plays the semi-reformed pickpocket, still unable to leave crime entirely behind.

Who played Fagin in David Lean's 1948 film?

His heavy make-up drew protests as antisemitic; the film was banned in Israel and reached the US only in 1951, cut by 12 minutes.

Why was Lean's 1948 film not released in the United States until 1951?

Twelve minutes were removed for the American release; the full version only returned to US screens in the 1970s.

Who played Sikes in the 1948 film?

In this version Sikes is shot by a policeman while swinging between buildings, rather than hanging himself by accident.

Who wrote the book, music and lyrics of the stage musical Oliver!?

It opened in the West End in June 1960 and ran for 2,618 performances, a London record for a musical at the time.

Which of these is a song from Oliver!?

'Consider Yourself', 'I'd Do Anything' and 'As Long as He Needs Me' are others; the score won a Tony in 1963.

The Broadway cast of Oliver! played The Ed Sullivan Show on 9 February 1964, the night of which debut?

The cast included a future Monkee as the Dodger.

Which future Monkee played the Artful Dodger in the original Broadway cast of Oliver!?

David Merrick brought the show to Broadway's Imperial Theatre in January 1963, with Georgia Brown as Nancy.

Who directed the 1968 film Oliver!?

He stepped in when Lewis Gilbert moved on to another picture, and cast his nephew Oliver Reed as the villain.

Which Oscar did the 1968 film Oliver! win at the 41st Academy Awards?

It took six awards from eleven nominations, including Best Director and an honorary award for choreographer Onna White.

Who played Fagin in the 1968 film, having initially refused the role as an unfair image of Jewish people?

He reprised the part on Broadway in 1984 opposite Patti LuPone's Nancy.

Which teenage actor was Oscar-nominated for playing the Artful Dodger in the 1968 film?

Mark Lester played Oliver; both were young unknowns among a cast that included Harry Secombe as the beadle.

Who played Sikes in the 1968 film, with all his songs cut?

Removing the songs pushed his performance closer to the novel's brute; he was the director's nephew.

Which Disney animated film of 1988 reset the story in New York with the hero as an orphaned kitten?

Billy Joel voiced Dodger, a street-wise terrier mongrel; the film also borrows from Les Misérables.

Who played Fagin in Roman Polanski's 2005 film?

Barney Clark was Oliver; Polanski, himself a child survivor of the Kraków ghetto, softened the character considerably.

Which graphic novelist reimagined the character sympathetically in Fagin the Jew (2003)?

The book responds to Fagin's legacy as one of the most infamous antisemitic caricatures in English literature.

What serial did Dickens originally intend Oliver Twist to be part of?

The workhouse town of the early chapters is thought to be the same 'Mudfog' of those comic pieces.

According to the novel, how far from London is the town where Oliver's workhouse stands?

Oliver walks the whole way to London after running away from the undertaker's.

What is Fagin's constant, insincere form of address to the boys in his gang?

He is a confessed miser who cares far more that the boys never 'peach' on him than for their welfare.

Which workhouse boy Dickens knew as a youth may have lent his name to Oliver?

Dickens gave many characters telling names; Oliver is described as 'all of a twist'.

What happens to Sikes's dog Bull's-eye at the end of the novel?

The scarred, vicious dog is read as an emblem of Sikes's own brutal, self-destructive character.

Where did Charles Zachary Barnett's three-act burletta of the novel open in 1838?

The stage version opened while the novel was still being serialised in Bentley's Miscellany.

Who played Fagin in Twist (2021), a modern-day version with Rita Ora as the Dodger?

Lena Headey was cast as a female take on Bill Sikes in the same film.

Which future Pirates of the Caribbean star was in ITV's 1999 version with Andy Serkis?

Serkis would play Gollum in The Lord of the Rings two years later.

In which country was Roman Polanski's 2005 Oliver Twist filmed?

Prague, Beroun and Zatec stood in for Victorian London; Ronald Harwood wrote the screenplay.

Who played Nancy in David Lean's 1948 film, and was also the director's wife at the time?

Walsh had collaborated on the screenplay of Lean's Great Expectations two years earlier.

How many performances did Oliver! run for at London's New Theatre from 1960, a record at the time?

The theatre is now the Noel Coward Theatre; Peter Coe directed and Sean Kenny designed.

Which Tony Award did Lionel Bart win for Oliver! in 1963?

The musical was brought to Broadway by producer David Merrick.