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
Golden Boy (novel) Golden Boy (novel) Golden Boy is the second novel by Abigail Tarttelin, published in 2013 about an intersex teenager, Max, and his family. It was described as a "dazzling debut" by Oprah's Book Club. Tarttelin has described how she explores intersex to look at gender roles, expressing the view that, "I don't particularly think men and women are very different". In discussion with Interview Magazine, Tarttelin comments that gender is arbitrary, but "a lot of it is socially constructed". She is concerned that some mainstream analysis of trans children exhibits a narrow world view and limited expectations of gender roles.