Dickens and the Workhouse

Ruth Richardson is a historian and the author of a number of books. The Wall Street Journal described her last book, The Making of Mr. Gray's Anatomy (Oxford University Press) as 'one of those rarities, history that reads like a novel'. That book won the 2009 Medical Journalists' Open Book Award.

• Introduction: Oliver Twist and the Workhouse ; 1. Discovery: Threat, Puzzle, Silences ; 2. Vicinity: Environs of Gentility, Environs of Poverty ; 3. Institutions: Hospital and Workhouse ; 4. Home: House, Landlord, Shop, Inside, Upstairs, Downstairs ; 5. Street: Looking Down and Around ; 6. Calamity: Sheerness, Chatham, Camden Town, Marshalsea, Somers Town ; 7. Young Dickens: Return to Norfolk Street, Young Professional, First Essays ; 8. Workhouse: St Paul's Parish, Farming the Infant Poor, Paul Pry, Parliament ; 9. Works: Contemporaries, Sketches, Spectres, Oliver Twist, Names, Echoes ; 10. The Most Famous Workhouse in the World: Truth and Fiction ; Appendix ; Notes ; Index

[Richardson] conjures up vivid images of poverty-stricken Victorian London and deepens our understanding of the sense of outrage that compelled Dickens to bring the predicament of the poor to wider attention.