PRESENTATION OUTLINE
Charles John Huffam Dickens February was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's most well-known fictional characters and is generally regarded as the greatest novelist of the Victorian period.[1] During his life, his works enjoyed unprecedented popularity, and by the twentieth century he was widely seen as a literary genius by critics and scholars. His novels and short stories continue to be widely popular.
Oliver Twist:Son of Edwin Leeford and Agnes Fleming, he is thought to be an orphan. A dear, grateful, gentle child, who "instead of possessing too little feeling, possessed rather too much." He had not learned "that self-preservation is the first law of nature."
Sally Thingummy: An old pauper woman who is an inmate of the workhouse and later dies there. She attends at Oliver's birth, "rendered rather misty by an unwonted allowance of beer."
Agnes Fleming:Oliver's mother; the daughter of a retired naval officer. "She was found dying in the street . . . but where she came from, or where she was going to, nobody knows."
Mrs. Mann:An elderly woman who conducts an infant farm (the then equivalent of a foster home). "A woman of wisdom and experience; she knew what was good for children," so of the funds provided for their sustenance "she appropriated the greater part . . . to her own use."
Mr. Bumble: The parish beadle (a minor church official); "a fat man, and a choleric (cranky show-off) [with] a great idea of his oratorical powers and his importance." "He had a decided propensity for bullying: derived no inconsiderable pleasure from the exercise of petty cruelty; and, consequently, was (it is needless to say) a coward."
Mrs. Mann:An elderly woman who conducts an infant farm (the then equivalent of a foster home). "A woman of wisdom and experience; she knew what was good for children," so of the funds provided for their sustenance "she appropriated the greater part . . . to her own use."
Mr. Bumble: The parish beadle (a minor church official); "a fat man, and a choleric (cranky show-off) [with] a great idea of his oratorical powers and his importance." "He had a decided propensity for bullying: derived no inconsiderable pleasure from the exercise of petty cruelty; and, consequently, was (it is needless to say) a coward."
Mr. Limbkins Head of the parish board; "a particularly fat gentleman with a very round, red face.
The Workhouse Master: "A fat, healthy man."
Gamfield: A chimney sweep, "whose villainous countenance was a regular stamped receipt for cruelty."
Mr. Sowerberry: An undertaker; "a tall, gaunt, large-jointed man," in matrimonial disputes denominated "a brute, an unnatural husband, an insulting creature, a base imitation of a man."
Mrs. Sowerberry: "A short, thin, squeezed-up woman, with a vixenish [literally, fox-like] countenance, [having] a good deal of taste in the undertaking way."
Charlotte: The Sowerberry's maidservant; a somewhat sloppy girl, she is "of a robust and hardy make."
