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 Wonder (novel) Boy Wonder (novel) Boy Wonder is a novel by James Robert Baker published in 1988. The novel is a mock of oral history of Los Angeles, California in which we hear the life of Hollywood avant-garde film producer Shark Trager. Orange County, California 1950: GALE 'SHARK' TRAGER is born to long-suffering WINNIE TRAGER in the backseat of her car at a drive-in. Shark's arch-conservative father MAC TRAGER (who looks uncannily like actor Glenn Ford) learns the news and ends up running someone off the road on his way to the hospital. Shark immediately is a strange kid, suffering from childhood