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
Wild Boy (novel) Wild Boy (novel) Wild Boy is a 2003 novel by English author Jill Dawson, published by Sceptre. Set in Paris at the beginning of the nineteenth century, it is a fictional retelling of the story of Victor, the Wild Boy of Aveyron. The novel is split into sections headed by dates in the French Republican Calendar which was in use at the time, and is in the main told by two narrative voices, Jean Marc Gaspard Itard, the doctor appointed to be the boy's tutor, and Madame Guerin to whom Itard entrusts his care. The story begins with Victor's arrival