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60 free Oliver Twist trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Oliver Twist trivia quiz begins in the workhouse with the bowl of gruel and ends in Newgate. The story questions cover Mr Bumble and the undertaker, Noah Claypole, the Artful Dodger's real name, Fagin's toasting fork, the stolen handkerchief, Magistrate Fang, the botched burglary, Monks and the locket, Nancy's secret meetings, the death of Sikes on the rooftops and what becomes of Oliver, Rose Maylie and the Bumbles. Then it turns to the book itself: the magazine that serialised it, Cruikshank's plates, the pen name Boz, the Poor Laws, the real criminal behind Fagin and the antisemitism argument that has followed the character since Dickens's lifetime. The last stretch covers the adaptations: Alec Guinness and the 1948 film's American ban, Lionel Bart's Oliver!, Davy Jones and the Beatles on Ed Sullivan, Carol Reed's Best Picture winner, Ron Moody, Jack Wild, Oliver Reed, Disney's kitten and Ben Kingsley. Every answer has been checked against the Wikipedia articles on the novel, its characters and its adaptations, and each explanation adds one detail worth passing on. BrainPickle also has separate quizzes on Great Expectations and on Charles Dickens himself.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Oliver Twist was which of Charles Dickens's novels?
His second
It followed The Pickwick Papers and was serialised in a monthly magazine from 1837 to 1839 under his pen name Boz.
Q 02What was the novel's alternative title?
The Parish Boy's Progress
It nods to Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress and to Hogarth's satirical print series A Rake's Progress and A Harlot's Progress.
Q 03In which magazine was the novel serialised in monthly instalments?
Bentley's Miscellany
The magazine's owner Richard Bentley published the book version, with 24 steel plates, six months before the serial finished.
Q 04Which artist provided one steel etching for each monthly instalment?
George Cruikshank
The 1948 film's Fagin make-up, prosthetic nose included, was modelled on his drawings.
Q 05Under what pseudonym was the book first published?
Boz
Dickens had used it for his Sketches by Boz; Phiz was the nickname of his illustrator Hablot Browne.
Q 06What punishment follows Oliver's request for more?
Solitary confinement and daily floggings
He is beaten in front of the other boys three times a week, then offered as an apprentice to anyone who will pay to take him.
Q 07What does Oliver famously ask the workhouse master for?
More gruel
The boys draw lots after six months of starvation rations and Oliver loses; the request causes an uproar and gets him sold as an apprentice.
Q 08Which pompous parish official flogs Oliver and later marries the Widow Corney?
Mr Bumble
The beadle and his wife end the novel as inmates of the very workhouse they once ran.
Q 09To what trade is Oliver apprenticed after leaving the workhouse?
Undertaking
Mr Sowerberry takes him on; Oliver attends a pauper's funeral and sees a whole family crammed into one miserable room.
Q 10Which fellow apprentice insults Oliver's dead mother and provokes him into a fight?
Noah Claypole
He later robs his master, flees to London with the maid Charlotte and joins Fagin's gang as a spy.
Q 11What is the real name of the Artful Dodger?
Jack Dawkins
He is caught in the end over a trifling theft and, the novel implies, transported to Australia.
Q 12What does Fagin train orphan boys to be?
Pickpockets
He is a 'kidsman' in the slang of the day, and is thought to be based on a real London fence.
Q 13Which real London criminal is Fagin widely believed to be based on?
Ikey Solomon
Solomon was a fence at the centre of a famous arrest, escape and recapture, and some accounts describe him training child thieves.
Q 21What items belonging to Oliver's dead mother do Monks and the Bumbles dispose of?
A ring and a medallion
They had been stolen from her body after she died giving birth in the workhouse.
Q 22To whom does Nancy secretly pass information to help Oliver?
Rose Maylie
Rose passes it on to Oliver's protector; Nancy still refuses to betray Sikes or Fagin, and pays for the meetings with her life.
Q 23Who follows Nancy on Fagin's orders and reports her secret meetings?
Noah Claypole
Fagin twists the report so that Sikes believes Nancy has informed on them, which she has actually refused to do.
Q 14Roughly how many times is Fagin called 'the Jew' in the first 38 chapters of the original edition?
Over 250
Dickens cut many of these references in later editions after complaints, notably from Eliza Davis, wife of the man who bought his London house.
Q 15Whose handkerchief is stolen in the theft that gets Oliver arrested?
Mr Brownlow's
The kindly gentleman takes the boy home and notices that he resembles a woman in a portrait on his wall.
Q 16Before which magistrate is Oliver tried for the theft?
Mr Fang
In the 1968 film the magistrate was played by Hugh Griffith, an Oscar winner for Ben-Hur.
Q 17Which brutal robber is Nancy's abusive lover?
Bill Sikes
His dog Bull's-eye shares his 'faults of temper' and dies immediately after his master.
Q 18What is the name of Sikes's dog?
Bull's-eye
Its scars are read as an emblem of its master's self-destructiveness; Sikes even tries to drown it once the police describe him as a man with a dog.
Q 19What goes wrong during the burglary Fagin forces Oliver to join?
He is shot and wounded
He ends up nursed by the very household he was sent to rob.
Q 20Which mysterious man plots with Fagin to keep Oliver from learning his parentage?
Monks
He turns out to be Oliver's half-brother, hoping to steal his share of their inheritance; he dies in an American prison.
Q 24How does Sikes die?
Accidentally hanged by his own rope
A vision of Nancy's staring eyes makes him lose his balance; the 1948 film changed it so a policeman's shot leaves him dangling.
Q 25What relation is Miss Rose to Oliver?
His maternal aunt
She marries and enjoys a long life; her sweetness is often linked to Dickens's grief for his young sister-in-law Mary Hogarth.
Q 26Where do Oliver and his protector visit Fagin the day before his execution?
Newgate Prison
The condemned man refuses to pray but reveals where the papers proving Oliver's identity are hidden.
Q 27What becomes of Oliver at the end?
Mr Brownlow adopts him
Meanwhile the Bumbles lose their posts and end up as workhouse inmates themselves.
Q 28Which harsh 1834 legislation is the novel's chief political target?
The new Poor Laws
Dickens mixes grim realism with satire on the workhouse system they created.
Q 29Which real orphan's account of child labour in a cotton mill may have inspired the novel?
Robert Blincoe
His memoir was widely read in the 1830s; a workhouse boy named Peter Tolliver may have lent Oliver his name.
Q 30What object is Fagin holding when he first appears in the novel?
A toasting fork
Standing over a fire, he looks devilish, and he refuses to pray on his last night; critics read him as a satanic figure.