The illustrations for Oliver Twist were ready before the text

For the novel Oliver Twist, the plates by illustrator George Cruikshank were often ready even before the text was written. This absurd situation was due to the constant delays of Charles Dickens, even though the author demanded the drawings before the fifth of each month. This atypical collaboration sometimes led to temporal discrepancies, such as a plate from December 1838 which illustrated events dating back to the month of August.