Oliver Twist

It was Dicken's second novel with recognizable antecedents in the Gothic Romance, the Newgate Novel and popular melodrama. But out of these elements the 25-year-old writer created an entirely new kind of novel, scathing in its exposure of contemporary cruelties, always exciting, and clothed in an unforgettable atmosphere of mystery and pervasive evil. Its major characters - Fagin, Bill Sikes, the Artful Dodger - have become creatures of myth, and its great scenes have lost none of their power to terrify and move.