Dickens and the workhouse : Oliver Twist and the London poor /

Medical historian Richardson (The Making of Mr. Gray's Anatomy) joined the cause to preserve a London building that had once been the Strand Union Workhouse in (as the British say) Cleveland Street. She made what she calls "the remarkable finding" that Dickens lived only a few doors away as a toddler and again in his late teens. Never mind that Dickens's London addresses have long been known and that he placed the Oliver Twist workhouse 75 miles north of London (an area he visited where there was a workhouse)-Richardson wants to make the case for this workhouse as the basis for the famous workhouse scenes in Oliver Twist. The possible connection has in fact saved the building from demolition. VERDICT It may not matter which real workhouse(s) inspired Dickens, but Richardson reveals Dickens's passionate relationship with London, its urban poor, 19th-century parliamentary reforms, and the task of social crusading. For all readers interested in Dickens's formative years and how he transformed experience into both narrative and action. They should also seek out Robert Douglas-Fairhurst's Becoming Dickens. (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.