Controversial Character: Allison Epstein Rounds Out a Contentious Character in Fagin the Thief
WRITTEN BY BEN BERGONZI
Fagin the Thief (Doubleday, 2025; reviewed in this issue) is an enjoyable and vivid biographical novel by Allison Epstein focusing on the imagined life, between 1793 and 1838, of the character Fagin – created by Charles Dickens as a charismatic, humorous semi-villain in Oliver Twist, but whom the author then maligned with antisemitic slurs. Epstein names him Jacob and gives him an extensive backstory.
I began our interview by observing that one of Epstein’s previous novels1 features Christopher Marlowe as a protagonist, and that the reframing of famous fictional or historical characters seems to be one of the dominant approaches within historical fiction. I asked her why she thinks this is.
She replied that she was drawn to historical topics or characters about whom she already had some knowledge. ‘There’s always pleasure in feeling grounded and at home in a story. Historical fiction is such a context-dependent genre that it can be intimidating to jump into something where the geography or political background requires a stop-and-Google break every few pages for the first five chapters. That said, while books like this might suit readers’ preferences, I don’t write with that in mind. I like the approach of biographical historical fiction or retellings because it allows me to engage with my characters both as a writer and as a reader. As a reader, there’s something about Fagin in Oliver Twist that caught my attention and wouldn’t let go. As a writer, he felt tantalizingly unfinished in the original text. It was a similar feeling with Marlowe: what records and documents exist about his life fascinate me as a reader of history, and as a writer there’s just enough gaps and mystery between the facts for my imagination to fit. I don’t think I’d get as much satisfaction out of biographical fiction about someone like Queen Elizabeth I, or a retelling of a character like Hamlet. Those stories already feel fleshed-out and lived-in; I need the room of a half-drawn thought or a rumor to play and explore.’
I wondered if she agreed that this can bring a danger of modern attitudes being applied to those who lived in a rougher and more intolerant period. ‘Oh, absolutely!’ she replied. ‘I think of this as “the corset problem”. You know how every period film includes the obligatory scene of a woman gasping to the point of fainting as someone laces her corset too tightly, as a metaphor for the restrictions placed on women in the XYZ era? Those are modern sensibilities. We see the corset today as an example of restrictive femininity; two hundred years ago, it was just underwear. It would be wrong to say that everyone in a particular era held uniformly biased or bigoted views, just as it would be wrong to say that today everyone is enlightened and accepting. And social progress isn’t purely linear: take Berlin in the 1920s and 1930s.
‘Historical fiction shouldn’t paste modern viewpoints over past scenarios, but it also shouldn’t be an excuse to revel in the worst kind of intolerance because “that’s just how it used to be.” I prefer reading—and try to write—historical fiction that’s less interested in explaining and more interested in understanding. What was it like to live in a given time? How did social expectations, personal beliefs and morality, relationships, identity all come together to form a particular kind of person in a particular place and time?’
I reassured Epstein that I felt she ably avoided any of the ‘identity politics’ point scoring of some modern critiques of Dickens’ Fagin. She responded that ‘It was important to me not to write a “Good Guy Fagin” retelling, as I have no interest in reading about or writing characters who are purely good. A person living in the circumstances Dickens gives Fagin wouldn’t be a kind, generous, selfless, courageous person. He couldn’t afford to be. So to understand the personality of Jacob, I tried to immerse myself as much in his world as possible.’
She went on to discuss her research methods. ‘One nice thing about writing a Dickens retelling is that the early Victorians loved a sociological study of “the underworld.” I read many pages of ethnography by Henry Mayhew – he went into detail on everything: how much bread was given out in Millbank Prison, what shawls women usually wore when picking pockets on the omnibus. The late Victorian surveyor Charles Booth also created an incredible resource called a Poverty Map. Having previously written about periods that were not so meticulously documented, it was a joy to find a primary source for almost every specific question I had.
‘I also did a fair amount of reading into the overall European Jewish experience in the late 18th and early 19th centuries: David Vital’s A People Apart2 was particularly useful in this area. England at this time wasn’t known for state-sanctioned antisemitic violence, as was the case elsewhere in Europe. But there was quiet, simmering mistrust. Jews could live openly under their religion, they could hold jobs, they could even earn a seat in Parliament, but true acceptance was something else altogether. It was putting these two aspects together, the demands of poverty and the sense that any acceptance was superficial and conditional, that helped me make sense of Jacob’s character. Of course he’s selfish, of course he’s fearful, of course he’s cruel: with his personality and his circumstances, these things were only logical.’
I then wondered if Epstein reads Dickens for pleasure. She does enjoy some; particularly ‘Bleak House, which I feel doesn’t get enough credit for being absolutely bonkers, and David Copperfield and A Tale of Two Cities are also personal favorites. That said, it took me four attempts to get through Great Expectations, and Hard Times is one of my all-time least favorite classic novels. For Oliver Twist, I’m torn! It definitely reads like Dickens is still learning. He creates a world that draws the reader in immediately, and there’s a reason Dodger and Sikes and Nancy have entertained readers for two hundred years. There’s a humming, dangerous energy to those chapters that I still find engaging, even having reread the book many times. At the same time, each character in Oliver Twist is relentlessly two-dimensional, the plot resolution is ludicrous, and the Brownlow-Maylie side plot is unforgivably boring.
‘Overall, I think about Dickens much the way I think about Shakespeare: he’s become so famous that critiquing anything he wrote is as good as admitting yourself to be uncultured and pedestrian. But both Dickens and Shakespeare were entertainers who got paid for turning in a story on a deadline. They aren’t marble busts in the hall of Great Literature; they were human beings, artists, and salespeople, just like any talented author living now. Sometimes Dickens is so insightful and so funny he takes your breath away.’
I told Epstein that one of the strongest aspects of the book is the level of obligation in the relationship between Fagin and Bill. I was fascinated by how Fagin starts by teaching Bill all he knows, then Bill comes to rescue Fagin from jail. Sikes’ lethal romance with Nancy is also shown with well-observed characterisation. I asked: what inspired this psychological acuity?
Epstein replied: ‘The question I kept asking while building out Bill, Jacob, and Nancy’s characters was a very basic one: “Why don’t they leave?” In the original text Dickens has several characters ask this question of Nancy outright. But I was just as intrigued by how Bill and Fagin would answer that question, if anyone ever thought to ask them. In Oliver Twist, they hate each other, only continuing together as literal partners in crime because each knows too much about the other. But that didn’t feel satisfying to me. I’ve seen many people I love in relationships that hurt them, and they don’t start out predatory. There’s always something good at the start – something meaningful, something precious that makes it possible to overlook the pain.
‘It would be rational for Nan to leave Bill the first moment he hurts her. It would be rational for Jacob to walk away from Bill at the first sign of violence. It would be rational for Bill to break it off with Nan when she starts exposing his vulnerability, or to turn his back on Jacob when their professional paths begin to diverge. But they aren’t making decisions rationally. They’re remembering that day, however long ago, when everything felt good and they were necessary and useful and respected. And so they stay, and they hurt themselves, and they hurt each other.’
I was particularly struck by a fine scene where Fagin contemplates suicide and ponders his posthumous reputation. So, finally, I asked Epstein about her writing technique, whether she prioritizes writing characters’ interior voices over writing physical events.
She said ‘I always imagined Fagin the Thief as being a very introspective book, in part as a deliberate contrast with the almost-total lack of interiority in Oliver Twist. The draft I originally sent to my editor had much less surface description, spending almost the entire first third of the book in Jacob’s head with minimal real-time action. My editor gently told me “This is a novel, and novels have scenes in them where things happen.” I added much more dialogue and “grounding” detail in the second draft of the book, which was definitely needed.’
A perceptive vindication of Fagin and a fine novel in its own right, Fagin the Thief should appeal to all readers with an interest in intelligent storytelling and believable characterisation – whether or not they like Dickens.
References:
1. Allison Epstein
A Tip for the Hangman, Doubleday, 2021
2. David Vital
A People Apart. The Jews in Europe, 1789-1939, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
About the contributor: Ben Bergonzi is an HNR Reviews Editor. His first published novel, set in the 18th century, will be out later this spring.
Published in Historical Novels Review | Issue 111 (February 2025)
