Oliver Twist

Abstract

Composition In November 1836 Dickens accepted the publisher Richard Bentley’s invitation to edit a new monthly magazine to be entitled Bentley’s Miscellany, and by an agreement dated 4 November he contracted ‘to furnish an orginal article of his own writing, every monthly Number, to consist of a sheet of about 16 pages’. The Miscellany began publication in January 1837, and the following month Dickens contributed not ‘an original article’ but the first instalment of a new novel. He was still engaged in writing Pickwick Papers, and his plan seems to have been to devote the first fortnight of each month to Oliver Twist and the second to Pickwick. Between November 1837 and February 1838 Dickens enjoyed a brief respite from his double task, with Pickwick concluded and Nickleby not yet begun; apart from this, he carried the staggering burden of writing two novels simultaneously throughout the composition of Oliver Twist. There was an interruption in May 1837 when Mary Hogarth died and Dickens felt unable to go on with his work; the June issue of the Miscellany accordingly carried an announcement that the instalment due would not appear. But by the beginning of June he was evidently back at his desk again. On 14 July he confessed himself to be ‘terribly behindhand’; a year later (15 July 1838), working towards a deadline (not in the event met) of September for volume publication, he had only just begun the last of the three volumes and admitted that he was ‘sadly harassed to get it finished in time’ and had ‘several very important scenes … yet to write’.