"Oliver Twist, Vol. 1 (of 3)" by Charles Dickens is a novel originally published serially from 1837 to 1839. An orphan escapes his brutal workhouse existence only to fall into London's criminal underworld, where a gang of child pickpockets operates under the sinister Fagin. As Oliver struggles between criminality and respectability, mysterious figures conspire to hide his true identity. This pioneering social novel exposes the cruel treatment of orphans and the dark reality of child exploitation in Victorian England. (This is an automatically generated summary.)