Oliver Twist & Me

The True Story of Charles Dickens’s best-loved novel
A dual biography of Charles Dickens and orphan boy Robert Blincoe, the orphan boy whose story Dickens used for Oliver Twist-by Robert’s descendant novelist Nicholas Blincoe.

“A fascinating family and social history and a savage indictment of the role of child slavery in the growth of the Industrial Revolution,” Catherine Taylor, author of The Stirrings: A Memoir in Northern Time

“A fascinating dual story,” Edel Coffey, The Gloss

We all think we know the tale. As a child, Charles Dickens was forced to work in a mouldering Thames-side blacking factory, an event that scarred him for life and inspired Oliver Twist. Except that’s only part of the story.

In reality, Dickens appropriated the stories of foundlings and orphans – including Robert Blincoe, whose memoir supplied the source material for his great novel of childhood. In