[W. M. Thackeray], from ‘Going to see a man hanged', Fraser's Magazine

Thackeray had already attacked Oliver Twist in Fraser’s for failing to present criminal life adequately, in ‘Horae Catnachianae’ (Fraser’s, April 1839, xix, 408–9: not in Works, but see Hollingsworth, The Newgate Novel, 150–1), and Catherine: a Story, Ch. iii and final paragraphs (ibid, June 1839, xix, 701; February 1840, xxi, 211–2). Dickens was rattled by this and other such attacks, and by finding Oliver Twist classified as a ‘Newgate’ novel. ‘I am by some jolter-headed enemies most unjustly and untruly charged with having written a book after Mr Ainsworth’s fashion. To these jolter-heads and their intensely concentrated humbug I shall take an early opportunity of temperately replying’—so far as he could without being disloyal to his friend Ainsworth (To R. H. Horne, ? 8 February 1840). The opportunity came with the publication of a Third Edition of Oliver Twist, for which he provided a Preface, dated April 1841. See Introduction, p. 8.