First page of an 1838 piracy

January 1838

Wood-engraving composite block

For the first monthly instalment of Oliver Twiss, The Workhouse Boy. Edited by Bos.

The most celebrated piracy of Dickens's Newgate novel was Oliver Twiss, The Workhouse Boy. Edited by Bos, a quasi-makeover of Dickens's novel issued in seventy-nine numbers between 1839 and 1841 by shady Bloomsbury publisher Edward Lloyd, pioneer of penny fiction for the labouring classes. However this title-page comes from the serial of the same name published by James Pattie. This version only consisted of 4 numbers, i.e. 32 pp. Authorship is generally attributed to Gilbert Abbot à Beckett. Indeed his entry is the first in the Oxford Reader's Companion to Dickens.

Scanned image by Philip V. Allingham.

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