Dickens and the Workhouse: Oliver Twist and the London Poor

Historian Dr Ruth Richardson’s meticulously researched book paints a lively portrait of every day life in 19th century London. ― Alice Coke, Absolutely Chelsea

Richardson’s enthusiasm for her subject shines throughout this hugely engaging and informative book ― BBC History Magazine

The important discoveries in this surprising book come from an intimate knowledge of Dickens and London, coupled with a historian’s passion. We’re seized by the hand of a detective and walked into Dickens’s world. Unputdownable. ― Miriam Margolyes

The book offers a detailed study of the Dickens’s family home and its surrounding neighbourhood, as well as an evocative and damning portrait of Britain’s de-facto ‘prison system to punish poverty’. ― New Yorker

Gives an intimately evoked view of Dickens’s childhood and the New Poor Law of 1834 by which workhouses became ‘a sort of prison system to punish [the poor]. ― New York Review of Books