‘Oliver Twist’, in Bentley’s Miscellany, Vol. 1

Bentley’s Miscellany (1837-1868) offered an assortment of serial fiction, short stories, historical writing, reviews (musical, culinary, and literary), and other snippets of information. Charles Dickens served as the journal’s inaugural editor, although he soon severed ties with its owner, Richard Bentley, whose interventionist approach to editing infuriated the up-and-coming novelist. This instalment of Dickens’s Oliver Twist features George Cruikshank’s famous illustration of Oliver asking for more. William Harrison Ainsworth succeeded Dickens as editor in 1839, and his serialized novel, Jack Sheppard, was even more successful than Dickens’s classic tale.