Jack Sheppard (novel) for many months in the "Bentley's Miscellany": Dickens' "Oliver Twist". The plots are similar, in that both deal with an individual attempting to corrupt a boy. Ainsworth's boy is corrupted, whereas Dickens' is not. Both authors also cast Jews as their villains; they are similar in appearance, though Ainsworth's is less powerful. According to Frank Chandler, the novel "was intended as a study in the Spanish style". Such influences appear in Jack's physical description and in the words of the characters. Dramatist John Gay stated that Jack's story is related to the stories of Guzman d'Alfarache, Lazarillo de Tormes, Estevanillo
Charles Dickens of inculcating his faith to his children and family. Dickens disapproved of Roman Catholicism and 19th-century evangelicalism, and was critical of what he saw as the hypocrisy of religious institutions and philosophies like spiritualism, all of which he considered deviations from the true spirit of Christianity. Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoyevsky referred to Dickens as "that great Christian writer". In December 1845, Dickens took up the editorship of the London-based "Daily News", a liberal paper through which Dickens hoped to advocate, in his own words, "the Principles of Progress and Improvement, of Education and Civil and Religious Liberty and Equal