The greatest writer of his time.Edmund Wilson One of the great poets of the novel a genius of his artEdgar Johnson In Oliver Twist .Dickens attacked English institutions with a ferocity that has never since been approached.George Orwell With an incredible cast of characters and an unvarnished portrayal of the early 1800s criminal underbelly in Victorian London Dickens second novel is an unforgettable masterpiece of the English language. Oliver Twist begins in a workhouse north of London where a young orphan named Oliver lives a brutal and impoverished life and is subjected to a series of torments as he is handed off to an undertaker to work as a mourner at funerals. After a succession of maltreatments Oliver runs away to London for a better life.