The novel may have been inspired by the story of Robert Blincoe, an orphan whose account of hardships as a child labourer in a cotton mill was widely read in the 1830s. It is likely that Dickens's own early youth as a child labourer contributed to the story's development. The book influenced American writer Horatio Alger, Jr. and his stories of poor boys living on the streets of nineteenth-century New York City.