Charles Dickens scenes in "The Pickwick Papers" are claimed to have been influential in having the Fleet Prison shut down. Karl Marx asserted that Dickens "issued to the world more political and social truths than have been uttered by all the professional politicians, publicists and moralists put together". George Bernard Shaw even remarked that "Great Expectations" was more seditious than Marx's "Das Kapital". The exceptional popularity of Dickens's novels, even those with socially oppositional themes ("Bleak House", 1853; "Little Dorrit", 1857; "Our Mutual Friend", 1865), not only underscored his almost preternatural ability to create compelling storylines and unforgettable characters, but also ensured
You've Got to Pick a Pocket or Two You've Got to Pick a Pocket or Two "You've Got to Pick a Pocket or Two" is a song from the Tony Award-winning British musical "Oliver!", and the 1968 Academy Award-winning film "Oliver!" based on the novel "Oliver Twist" by Charles Dickens. The musical was penned by Lionel Bart, and was first shown in London's West End in 1960. The song is sung in Fagin's lair in a scene based on the section of Dickens's book where Fagin (played by Ron Moody in the film) teaches Oliver Twist and the rest of the boys how to pick the pockets of