Thread by @PhilipArdagh

1/8 With all this talk about ‘sanitising’ the work of Dickens and other classics, here’s an interesting tale. In 1860, Charles Dickens sold his London home. Three years later, the woman of the house, one Eliza Davis - who was Jewish - wrote to Dickens ...

2/8 asking if he’d like to donate funds to a Jewish convalescent home which might, in some small way, atone for his portrayal of the Jew, Fagin, in OLIVER TWIST. Her letter contained the passage : “Charles Dickens, the large-hearted, whose works plead so eloquently and so ...

3/8 nobly for the oppressed of his country [...] has encouraged a vile prejudice against the despised Hebrew.” Dickens, stunned by the rebuke, responded: “[I]f there be any general feeling on the part of the intelligent Jewish people that I have done them what you describe as...

4/8 ‘a great wrong’ they are far less sensible, a far less just & a far less good temped people than I have always supposed them to be.” If he thought that would silence Mrs Davis, he was very much mistaken. She pointed out that OLIVER TWIST was full of Christians of all hues...

5/8 whereas there was only one Jew; “a very shrivelled Jew, whose villainous-looking and repulsive face was obscured by a quantity of matted red hair,” and, to make matters worse, was referred to as ‘the Jew’, rather than by the name Fagin, HUNDREDS of times in the text...

6/8 Then, very cleverly, Eliza Davis, pointed out that Dickens’s good friend and fellow novelist, Wilkie Collins, included plenty of sympathetic Jewish characters in HIS books. The point was made. The argument was won. When OLIVER TWIST was being reprinted some years later...

7/8 Dickens leapt in to make some last-minute changes, mid-printing. The printers had already printed Chapter 1 to 38 in which Fagan is referred to as 'the Jew' 274 times but, from Chapter 39 onwards, he frantically tried to edit out such references...

8/8 This was the original author making the changes but times change, sensibilities change and, if later minor edits are made in later editions or adaptations, the original remains unchanged but these revised versions become accessible in ways they might not otherwise have been.