While not precisely autobiographical, Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist does have certain elements that are based on Dickens’s own life. In the book, and like Dickens himself, Oliver spends part of his childhood working in a workhouse for the poor.
Dickens’s father, John, had “no money sense,” according to the...
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author. John Dickens was therefore always in debt. As a result, when he could not satisfy his creditors, he was imprisoned in the Marshalsea Debtors' Prison in 1824. Charles was twelve years old at the time, and this made a deep impression on him that stayed with him throughout his life. He resented the treatment of the poor or debt-laden greatly. He wrote about the different economic classes throughout his novels, decrying the way underprivileged people fared in England.
John’s imprisonment also led to a big change in Charles’s life. With his father in debtor’s prison, Charles had to help support the family. He was taken out of school and, like Oliver, forced to work in a warehouse. John Dickens was released from prison after a few months, and Charles was sent back to school.
Unlike Dickens, Oliver is born in a poor house. Oliver is an orphan; Dickens was not. However, in Oliver Twist, Dickens writes about orphans and charity cases as living in similar circumstances. Specifically, Dickens writes about Noah Claypole:
Noah was a charity-boy, but not a workhouse orphan. No chance-child was he, for he could trace his genealogy all the way back to his parents, who lived hard by; his mother being a washerwoman, and his father a drunken soldier, discharged with a wooden leg, and a diurnal pension of twopence-halfpenny and an unstateable fraction.
Eventually, Oliver discovers that he comes from a wealthy family, which is quite different from Dickens. Thus, while Oliver Twist and Charles Dickens share certain life experiences, it would be a stretch to say that the book is largely based on the author’s life.