When Is a Book Not a Book? Oliver Twist in Context

The New York Public Library, Berg Collection of English and American Literature

In April of 1837, Charles Dickens posed for his friend and illustrator George Cruikshank. "I was sitting for my portrait to George Cruikshank ... to-day," Dickens told a friend, "and George being a ticklish subject [I] could not leave him." Cruikshank's drawing of Dickens was subsequently engraved and sold; the Dickens House Museum in London has a copy, and it is featured on the dust jacket of David Parker's new book, The Doughtie Street Novels (New York: AMS Press, 2002).

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