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
Boy Meets Boy (novel) Boy Meets Boy (novel) Boy Meets Boy is a young adult novel by David Levithan, published in 2003. It is set in a gay-friendly small town in America, and describes a few weeks in the lives of a group of high school students. As the title suggests, the central story follows the standard romantic plotline usually known as "boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl" except that the main characters are both boys, the narrator Paul and newcomer Noah. The novel won a Lambda Literary Award. Openly gay sophomore Paul lives in a gay-friendly small town in New