Main works:

The Pickwick Papers

Oliver Twist

Our Mutual Friend

Nicholas Nickleby

The Old Curiosity Shop

Barnaby Rudge

Martin Chuzzlewit

Dombey and Son

David Copperfield

Bleak House

Hard Times

Little Dorrit

Our Mutual Friend

A Tale of Two Cities

Great Expectations

Oliver Twist tells the story of a poor child named Oliver Twist. He is born in a workhouse and brought up under miserable conditions. After experiencing an unhappy apprenticeship to undertaker, he runs away to London, where he falls into the hands of a gang of thieves. Then he is made to be a pickpocket. A benevolent rich old man called Mr. Brownlow rescues him and takes him home, but the thieves kidnap him and make him join them once again. A bad person named Monks, who turns out to be Oliver in the gang, in order to ruin him and obtain the whole of his father's property. Then Oliver is made to help one of the thieves in breaking into a lady's house. He gets wounded, and comes into the hands of a lady who turned out to be her aunt. Finally the thieves in the gang are punished and Oliver's half brother is compelled to confess his evil doings and put into prison. Oliver is adopted by Mr. Brownlow.

This novel is a powerful exposure of bourgeois society. It shows the extreme brutality and corruption of the oppressors and their agents under the mask of philanthropy. Dickens, the great critical realist gives vivid descriptions of their sufferings of the poor and oppressed. We see that Dickens, while sympathizing with the miseries of the people, did not know what or who was responsible for such miseries and even cherished illusion about rich, idle and benevolent people like Mr. Brownlow. He believed that the whole social problems would be solved if only every employer followed the example set by "good gentlemen" like Brownlow.