(Dickens’ Inspiration: Child Labor? Video of Oliver Twist intro above)

Charles Dickens’ inspiration for writing may have indeed come from child labor. Much of Charles Dickens’ writing (such as Oliver Twist) is checkered with child labour. There is good reason for this: Dickens’ himself had been a child laborer. His father, John Dickens was arrested for extensive debt when Charles was merely twelve years old. Because of this, Charles was pulled from school and forced to labor at a shoemaking factory, despite his young age. This undoubtedly caused much psychological damage for Dickens.

Dickens would go on to be a clerk in a lawyer’s office at fifteen, and a reporter for the Doctor’s Commons Courts at the age of seventeen. It is no doubt that Dickens’ inspiration to write may very well have come from child labor.