CHAPTER I Treats of the History of the Work
Dickens was dead to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. One had only to look at Oliver to see for one's self that Dickens was as dead as Jacob Marley.
He had written Oliver Twist to rip the brocade from Puritan England and reveal the human misery beneath. To those who found his melodrama too coarse, Dickens replied: "Criminal characters, to suit them, must be, like their meat, in delicate disguise ... It is wonderful," he continued, "how Virtue turns from...
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