The first name of Dickens’s orphan character Twist is Oliver.
Oliver Twist is the title character of Charles Dickens’s novel Oliver Twist; or, The Parish Boy’s Progress. He is born in a workhouse, and his mother dies during childbirth, leaving him to be raised under harsh parish care. When Oliver is nine, he is returned to the workhouse, where the starving children draw lots to ask for more food. Oliver is chosen and famously requests a second helping of gruel.
After being treated as a troublemaker, Oliver is apprenticed to an undertaker but eventually runs away to London. There he falls in with the pickpocket gang led by Fagin. The novel follows Oliver’s struggle to preserve his innocence amid poverty, crime, exploitation, and institutional cruelty, while also uncovering the secrets of his family background.
A common mix-up is confusing Oliver with other Dickens characters: Nicholas is the title character of Nicholas Nickleby, Pip belongs to Great Expectations, and David Copperfield narrates the novel named after him. Oliver Twist was serialised from 1837 to 1839 and published in book form in 1838.