Oliver Twist The alternative title, "The Parish Boy's Progress", alludes to Bunyan's "The Pilgrim's Progress", as well as the 18th-century caricature series by William Hogarth, "A Rake's Progress" and "A Harlot's Progress". In this early example of the social novel, Dickens satirises the hypocrisies of his time, including child labour, the recruitment of children as criminals, and the presence of street children. The novel may have been inspired by the story of Robert Blincoe, an orphan whose account of working as a child labourer in a cotton mill was widely read in the 1830s. It is likely that Dickens's own youthful experiences
Farm Boy (novel) Farm Boy (novel) Farm Boy is a novel by Michael Morpurgo, best known as being the sequel to the popular novel "War Horse". The book was first published in the United Kingdom in 1997 by Pavilion Books Limited and is illustrated by Michael Foreman. It was not initially planned for Morpurgo to write a sequel to "War Horse", but the story was inspired after receiving many enquiries about what happens to Joey, a horse in service of the Army (the main character from "War Horse") after the Great War. In an article in ChronicleLive Michael Morpurgo also stated that his