Fagin's depiction is definitely marked by antisemitism, but it is a rather careless, traditional antisemitism rather than the malignant forms we are more used to since the Nazi era.
Dickens based the character of Fagin on a real Jewish fence named Ikey Solomon, who was tried at the Old Bailey in June 1830 (he was not, however, sentenced to death). This contemporary reference, and the general antisemitic assumption that Jews were particularly money-grubbing, scheming, and dishonest, would have made the choice natural to Dickens on an unconscious level.
However, when the unpleasant aspects of making Fagin a stereotyped "Jew" were pointed out to Dickens, he felt revulsion for his carelessness. The wife of a Jewish associate criticized him in a letter in 1863, calling the caricature of Fagin a "great wrong." In response, Dickens wrote that "There is nothing but good will left between me and a People for whom I have a real regard and to whom I would not willfully have given an offence."
Dickens thus began revising Oliver Twist to play down Fagin's Jewishness. He cut many references to Fagin as "the Jew," and in his public readings refrained from delivering Fagin's lines in a stereotypical way. He also put a wholly admirable Jewish character into his 1865 novel Our Mutual Friend, Riah, whose behavior towards younger people is the precise reverse to Fagin's behavior towards his young thieves.
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